


When the Circus Comes to Town

by moontyrant



Series: Vampire Vimes [1]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/F, Gender Roles, Gender or Sex Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-04-30 14:42:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5167664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moontyrant/pseuds/moontyrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the circus comes to Ankh-Morpork in celebration, er, recognition of Lord Vetinari's death, a vampirized Sam Vimes stumbles across a corpse in a puddle of the b-word. Enlisting the help of a young witch who reminds him of the late Patrician himself and a bright-eyed copper with the last name of Ironfoundersson, Sam Vimes must sort out the classic who-dunnit with no shortage of suspects, while he tries to heal his strained relationship with his son, the good Doctor Vimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Regicide or More of the Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think congratulations are in order,” the chair’s occupant said at last.  
> Antony von Lipwig could not move; his feet felt rooted to the bland floral carpeting even as he gaped in unblinking horror. “You’re dead.”  
> Sam Vimes grinned.

Antony Von Lipwig bid his adoring public and fond goodnight and staggered up the stairs. The Patrician’s Palace was lousy with spiral staircases—all fine marble and carefully polished by a beleaguered housekeeping staff. Of course, he should quit thinking of the palace as the Patrician’s and start thinking of it as his, now oughtn’t he?

Flushed with victory and more than a couple glasses of champagne, he really wasn’t paying close attention to his surroundings. He pushed open the door to the Patrician’s—his—office and paused on the threshold, a whiff of cigar smoke hanging on the air. The smell was thick and dark and cloying, similar to the long, slender cigarettes favored by his mother in his youth, and completely different. “Hello?” he inquired into the soft darkness. A hiss of a gas lamp igniting and yellow light flooded the room. Antony could see the clean, blank desk blotter, the empty inbox and outbox, the crisp if bland wallpaper and somehow blander carpet, and, of course, the chair.

In his growing age, Lord Vetinari-may-he-rest-forever commissioned a swiveling desk chair from a madman. It was meant for ease of turning, but, like many things in the late lordship’s possession, became another piece of dramaturgy. He would sit in the chair and face away from a visitor, staring out of the picture window and into his city, and then, slowly and with the utmost menace, he would turn the chair to face his visitor. It was a small thing, really. And it was terrifying.

That chair now faced out the picture window. At the top Antony could see just the crest of a dark-haired head, and a moment of pure dread did the work of an entire thermos of Klatchian coffee. _Because what if his lordship were not truly dead?_

And on a related note, _what if the person in that chair was there to assassinate Antony?_

“I think congratulations are in order,” the chair’s occupant said at last. And the chair turned. Slowly and with the utmost menace.

Antony could not move; his feet felt rooted to the bland floral carpeting even as he gaped in unblinking horror. “You’re dead.”

Sam Vimes grinned. It was not a nice grin. His teeth gleamed too sharp and too white in the lamplight, his face haggard and scarred from a hard life and strangely pale. He did not come in a copper’s uniform, nor in ducal regalia, but in commoner’s clothes twenty years out of date, all in shades of dusty black. Last, an axe laying across his knees drew Antony’s eye, and for some reason this was the detail that ratcheted his heart rate to dangerous levels. Because Antony, as a well-to-do young man, had gone on a Grand Sneer in his youth and he knew the stories not only of Stoneface Vimes the Regicide, but of Sam Vimes the Butcher, Sam Vimes the Equalizer, Sam Vimes the Blackboard Monitor. All the stories featured an axe. Vetinari wasn’t the only one with a flair for dramaturgy.

“Please, do come in,” Vimes ordered. Antony’s feet obeyed without any input from his brain. The door behind him creaked and then shut with a slam, apparently of its own volition. Vimes’ eyes glowed in the lamplight, bottomless and dark except around the edges, gold there. Inhuman. “Have a seat, lad.” Antony dropped into the guest chair like a sack of potatoes.

He swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Kill you,” Vimes grumbled. He rummaged in his pockets for a moment and produced a fat cigar. He tucked it between his teeth and lit the end, puffed a few times and then squinted at Antony through the wisps of blue-gray smoke. “Why should I kill you, Mr. Lipwig?”

“Why else would you lurk in the shadows of the Oblong Office on the day of my inauguration, sitting in my chair and _holding an axe_?” Unbidden, outrage mingled with terror had Antony’s voice shaking toward the end.

Vimes watched him and puffed, face thoughtfully blank. “It really wasn’t my intention to be so, let’s say, melodramatic.” His lips curled unhappily at the thought. “I really don’t go in much for drama. I just wanted to have a word with you about the tyranny. And I thought to myself, ‘Better bring the axe to let him know the carrot comes with the stick,’ and then I thought ‘Don’t want to disturb the party, better wait in the office,’ but it was nice and dark in here, ‘Best not to waste lamp oil before it matters.’” He waved a hand through a plume of cigar smoke. “It all just sort of adds up when I’m not looking. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Do you know what I pulled out of my closet to wear this evening?”

“Um…”

“A blue sweater with some egg down the front of it. I pull it on because it’s my favorite and it’s very comfortable, and the next thing I know I look down and I’m in full evening dress like I’m going to the theater later or something.” He blew smoke out of his nose, like an outraged dragon. “I hate this condition. Willikins used to say I looked like a badly shaven upstart.”

“That seems rude?” Antony offered, at a loss.

Vimes glowered. “I _like_ being a badly shaven upstart! Now I skip shaving a couple days and you know what Margolotta-godsdamn-von-Uberwald says? She says I look devilishly rakish. Me! Rakish!”

Antony, usually a quick and diplomatic thinker, was coming to a conclusion. It was a very large conclusion, he felt. Kind of like trying to look at a mountain when you were standing on it; there were rocks and goats and a definite slope, but if you didn’t know any better it might take you a moment’s thought or a very long fall to figure out where you were. “Your condition?” he said weakly.

“You know, it’s all well and good for the eternal youth—ha!—and the power and what have you, but I miss my damn boots most of all. Cardboard soles, could really feel the cobbles beneath your feet. I bought a new pair about four years ago and the soles haven’t worn out yet,” he sighed, morose. “They shine, even. Boots have no business shining.” He turned the axe handle over in his hands a few times before looking down as if just realizing it was there.

“You are dead, then,” Antony marveled.

“We prefer differently alive,” Vimes sniffed. “I made the mistake of bringing Reg Shoe with me to a meeting. Now all the ribboners are running around with his slogans, showing up at protests, causing a fracas.”

“A fracas,” Antony echoed dully. A sudden pang of sympathy clenched at him. _This is what Vetinari dealt with on the regular._

“And that brings me to you,” Vimes said. Something in his tone, or perhaps his eyes, had Antony replaying the conversation, looking for the clue. A vampire couldn’t be a straightforward copper; a vampire couldn’t barge into a party, open with “I’m an undead, mean, nasty bastard so listen up!” and speak his piece. No, better to step lightly around the subject until Antony swallowed it hook, line and sinker. He took a moment to curse himself for a fool; that was one of his father’s favorite tricks of the trade. Vimes grinned his nasty grin and hefted the axe. “Now that I have your attention, take a look at this. See this blade? I’d say it’s dwarven made but I honestly have no idea. All I know is it’s sharp as hell and it’s surprisingly well balanced for something meant to chop wood.

“So, my dear patrician, you have the office,” Vimes gestured grandly at the Oblong Office, pivoting in the chair as he did so, “We’ll call this the carrot. And now you see my new favorite toy,” the lamplight flashed across the wicked sharp blade, “and we’ll call this the stick. I took an oath to protect and serve. I do what I can. I help the police with ongoing investigations in an unofficial capacity, and I find justice where I can. I know quite a few of the officers in the City Watch, and I know the ones who would have what it takes to serve and protect the city, even if it meant protecting it from, say, you.” He gestured with the axe at Antony. He could _hear_ air particles slicing across that keen edge. “And while I know some of them wouldn’t bat an eye at clapping you in irons, or pursuing you across international borders, or even parting your head from your shoulders, it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.”

Antony blinked. “How do you mean?” he asked slowly. From the stories he heard of Vimes, it was impossible to follow his thought processes until well after the fact, and only then with a guide fluent in Vimese, specializing in the Bullshit dialect. Vetinari, at least, had Lady Sybil-may-she-rest-in-peace to confer with after the most twisted of his stunts.

“I mean that good cops do the job in front of them, and sometimes the job entails something ugly. I mean that if you put my people in an awkward position, where a good cop has to make a choice between doing the Right Thing and failing Ankh-Morpork, or doing the Wrong Thing and becoming a bad cop, then I’m going to step in.”

“You would rather become a regicide than allow one of your, your _Sammies_ get their hands dirty?”

Vimes tapped the side of his nose. “For what it’s worth, I don’t plan on making it a habit.”

“I should hope not. Pray tell, what’s keeping you from taking the tyranny for yourself?” Antony had a hypothesis, but he wanted to see how Vimes would answer.

He hesitated for just a moment and then answered just a hair too quickly. “Politics doesn’t agree with me.”

“I see. Is that all, Your Grace?”

A muscle in Vimes’ face twitched at the title. “If you say ‘Do not let me detain you’ we are going to have a very long, earnest discussion, with the highlights being ‘Don’t do it’ and ‘Have I mentioned how sharp this axe is?’”

Antony pursed his lips. “I see. Then I’ll simply say, ‘Have a good night, Mister Vimes.’”

Alone in his new office, Antony Von Lipwig sat in the swivel chair the Duke vacated and stared out at the city. His city. What an absurd man, he thought to himself. _Politics doesn’t agree with me_ indeed, saying it like a lie. Antony grew up with a conman for a father, and an activist for a mother; he knew the difference between lies posing as truth and truth posing as lies. He didn’t become Patrician by kissing babies, after all.

What must it be like, being a vampire and hating politics?

 

When Willikins passed away, an Igor came to the house to take the kinds of things a dead man doesn’t need anymore. What goes around comes around. Igor took what was needed, passed on the useful parts to needy people and never really left. He liked working under a vampire. An Igor working for a vampire knew where he stood.

“Bloody hells!” Vimes squawked, leaping a clear three feet in the air.

Usually an Igor stood exactly three centimeters behind his vampire, and got there on silent feet. “How wath your meeting with the Patrithian, marthter?”

Vimes dropped out of the rafters, glowering. “It went fine!” He made to smooth down his sweater, but seeing it never had any wrinkles while on him, the gesture seemed a moot point. “Young Sam?”

“Young marthter is abed the patht two hourth, thir. The houthe ith thafe.”

Vimes nodded. He didn’t need to check in on his son; Young Sam was a grown man at the age of thirty-four. Of course, some habits were harder to break than others, and he made it a point to be as obnoxiously fatherly as possible when he visited the city. Tomorrow he would demagnetize the storm drains and reinforce the shutters, but until then he could take a breather.

Igor peeled him out his vaguely shabby evening attire, politely ignoring his master’s muttered protests, and set the clothes aside. Vimes wasn’t a particularly large man: middling height, middling build, something about him projected height and width he simply didn’t have. Then again, that probably had nothing to do with the vampirism and everything to do with the air of wrathful suspicion that followed him. Igor fished the little bronze chip from one of his master’s pockets and set it on the dresser. Twenty-five years, and not a single drop. He unpinned the little black ribbon from the front of what was a fetching black opera cloak on Sam’s figure and was now a nubby blue sweater with egg dribble stained down the front, and set the ribbon beside the chip.

“Would marthter fanthy a thave?”

Freshly clothed in a billowing flannel nightshirt—in the closet Igor knew it had blue polka dots on it, but now were transformed into little blue bats—Sam Vimes scowled. “You know how I feel about that, Igor.”

“Lady Margolotta did thay you were—“

“Don’t say it—“

“rakithly handthome.”

“Agh!” Vimes turned on his heel and headed for the cellar. He drifted down the stairs, picked his way through the piles of abandoned dragon crates, feeding troughs, canning materials and the inexplicable horde of pickled beets until he reached the coffin. Well, it was more of a pinewood box, really, with a sheet and a pillow stuffed inside to prevent splinters. Lady Sybil, bless her heart, wanted to get him a posh coffin but sleeping in satin made him twitchy. He resisted coffins altogether for some time, but the hereditary paranoia and agoraphobia-fueled nightmares finally had him stomping into a funeral home and buying the first, cheapest coffin he could find.

“Thleep well, marthter,” Igor said before dropping the lid of the coffin on Vimes' glare.

He patted the lid and lurched back the way he came. Oh yes, you knew where you stood with vampires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I have fifteen million fics I need to write and edit.  
> Brain: Start a new one.  
> Me: Why?  
> Brain: You gotta.


	2. News Like Ignatia Travels Fast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You turn patients this big regularly?” she inquired, fastidiously polite.
> 
> “I’m just big boned!” he griped.
> 
> “Sir, I can comfortably say that you are big everything’d. Face facts,” Ignatia replied, her tone as close to kind as it ever came.
> 
> Spelly worried. Ignatia had a ferocious temper, and it was usually preceded by sweet smiles, vigorous nods of agreement and gentle tones.

A vampire, not-quite-a-duke-anymore, but always a policeman, Sam Vimes wandered the Disc. The Law was needed in Borogravia. The Law was needed in the desertous wastelands of the Klatchian Empire. The Law was needed, and wherever he went, Vimes brought it with him. He didn't bother with the name Vimes, instead falling back on Keel. A serviceable name, no one looked at it twice. Before his affliction, he trained watchmen who would serve in Quirm, Sto Lat, Bonk. And after his affliction he trained Sammies who would never know they were Sammies. They didn't need to know- all he asked was that they be damn good coppers.

Years passed, marked by the sending of letters and small parcels to his son on his birthday. Sometimes Young Sam wrote back. Sometimes he did not. When Vetinari passed away and passed the tyranny on to Lipwig’s kid, Vimes travelled home to see him and give him advice. Chiefly, don’t be a power-mad despot and you’ll never have to see me again.

Five years later, Vimes went home again.

Vetinari was dead. Vimes wandered down the streets, his streets, feeling as if he were walking in a dream. He wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t Vetinari’s friend—the old Patrician had no friends, from what he could tell. Oh, sure, there was Leonard da Quirm, but he was more prisoner than friend. For the duration of his career, Vimes was Vetinari’s terrier, an adversary and a master at once. There were times he downright hated the man. So no, he wasn’t sorry Vetinari was gone. He wasn’t bereft.

But they had an understanding of sorts. Vetinari ran the city and Vimes was one of his little cog wheels, well-oiled and made shiny with use. And Vetinari, at the same time, fell under Vimes’ purview. Because Vimes wasn’t shy about giving Vetinari a piece of his mind, and on one memorable occasion that piece also involved reading the black flamingo his rights. Five years later he didn’t miss Vetinari, but he never expected the man to really die, either.

 

Sir Samuel Vimes paused on his doorstep, a few biological texts tucked under his arm. “I know you’re there,” he said.

A shadow detached from the darker recesses of the house’s exterior. The Ramkin Manor, of course, possessed no natural dark recesses, which was how Sir Samuel knew he was not alone. Dark recesses followed the specter before him like the day follows the sun. “What do you want?”

Vimes squinted and fished about his person for a cigar. “Can’t I see my own son?”

“Now you’ve seen me. Good day, Father.”

“What are you studying, there?” Vimes asked around his unlit cigar.

That stopped Sir Samuel cold. Because his father used the Copper Voice. He might as well have asked him where he had been on the night of the twentieth of Grune. It was all steel and hard edges; he did not know when his father completed the transition between Dad and cop. His childhood ears never heard the Copper Voice directed at him personally. But somewhere along the way the transition had taken place, in full and irrevocable. Somewhere along the way Dad went from human to vampire, from Dad to copper, from the man who put the stars in the sky to the somebody he used to know. From Dad to Father.

“Anatomy and physiology, if you must know,” Sir Samuel answered as coldly as he dared. “I have a goblin patient with an unusual hereditary disease. It wouldn’t interest you.”

“I see.”

The silence hung between them, thick with all the things unsaid. “I must be going; Igor is waiting for me.”

“I see.”

Vimes let him go. “I reset all the bear traps. And I oiled the gutters!”

 

There was a circus in town. One of the larger squares had been cleared of carts and people, allowing the carnies to raise a gaudy tent. The scent of sickly sweet caramel corn and fried pickles hung thick on the air, jockeying for olfactory real estate with damp straw and circus animals. Vimes skirted the cluster of patrons purchasing tickets and carefully did not see the two or three individuals scalping tickets just a little way aways. In fact, he intended to skirt the entire encampment were it not for a sticky smell wafting from the tent, practically imperceptible under the stink of nervous animals and burning sugar, but which assailed his keen senses like a ballpeen hammer to the sinuses.

Someone, somewhere in that tent, committed a crime. The kind of crime that splashes the B word about the place in liberal amounts. He took stock of himself; he wore a Watch uniform, approximately twenty years out of date. It would have to do.

 

Ignatia Wrathine screwed her pointy black hat on her head and slung her bag over her shoulder. Under her careful hand, the circus flourished. Her whole life, short as it may be so far, she worked over it as a gardener works over a Bonsai tree. Prune this here, turn the pot just so, a little more water this week. She was a witch, and a clerk of sorts, good with numbers and crises. She pulled the circus from the brink of bankruptcy and made it work, even going so far as to make it flourish. But she was a witch, and a clerk of sorts, and a woman, and the circus didn’t need her anymore.

Well, she knew which way the wind was blowing. She would not stick around where she wasn’t wanted. She stepped out into the cool morning air, her booted feet clomping dully across the cobbles. She did not know where she was going; a snarling sensation tugged inside her chest. Anger, she reflected dully. In the fullness of time it will flare into rage and then smolder into something hotter, something with which she could stoke the kiln of innovation and hammer out the white-hot irons of action. But until then she would nurse the anger there, feed it fuel and breath, and wait.

Her mind turned, cold and shiny and bright, cogs and wheels clicking along with nowhere to go but forward. She didn’t know where she was going, but gods save them all when she got there.

 

Sam Vimes was dead. This was not news to anyone, but it would horrify the general population if they knew he was still walking around. “Captain Keel, City Watch,” he said, waving his badge in the face of the first person to bar his entry.

“We’re not open to the public yet,” the young ticket master spluttered.

“Good thing I’m not public, then,” Vimes growled, and stepped around the kid. He peered over the lenses of his tinted glasses and scowled. An oil slick of red stretched out from what would have been the center ring of the circus, tacky in the middle and crusted around the edges.

A harried looking clown in all turbid shades of red and yellow loped to meet him, shoes flopping. “I say! I say! What do you think you’re doing, man!?”

“Captain Keel, City Watch,” Vimes snapped, waving his badge in the clown’s face. “What’s happened here?”

“The Watch need not concern themselves with—“

“Oh, I see! Then do assuage my worries by coming down to the Watch House and we’ll just make damn sure there’s nothing to worry about!”

The clown opened his mouth, shut it, and then spluttered. “This is circus business! We handle our own!”

“Welcome to the big city. What would be your name, then?” He took out his notebook and flipped it open to the first empty page. A pencil stub materialized in his hand and the graphite point waited, poised over the page.

Another man who had been waiting in the shadows padded to the clown’s rescue with a disarming smile. Charisma wafted off him like kerosene fumes. “Do forgive Blinkey,” he cooed. The clown shook himself and trudged back amidst his peers, who had formed a macabre ring around the pool of the B word. “Recent events have us all shooken up, I’m afraid.” He offered a hand. “Eugene Sonder, Ringleader and Master of Ceremonies. How may I help the Watch, good sir?” When it became apparent Vimes wasn’t going to shake his hand he dropped it by his side.

“I’d like to know what’s happened. Who was killed, to start with.”

“Ah,” the smile almost fell off Sonder’s face, but seemed to rally at the last moment. “A bit of in-feuding, I’m afraid. Our manager and my dear friend Mr. Campbell was assaulted in the early hours of this morning. The trapeze artists found him when they went up for an early rehearsal. It’s…a tragedy.” Something that was almost entirely, but not quite, like regret colored his voice and Sonder cast his eyes to the ground. “I believe he had quite the row with one of our clerks yesterday. We believe she is to blame; she has been sacked, quite without ceremony.”

Vimes nodded as he scratched shorthand into his book. “Does she have a name? And a description?”

Sonder’s eyes danced. “Ignatia Wrathine.”

 

Ginger sprawled out on the dilapidated, badly stained couch in the Watch House. She often lingered there for a bit before going on duty and a bit after. Despite her wiry frame she stood at nearly six foot and occupied the entire couch. No one asked her to move; if they did, she would smile at them. She believed a gentle word could turn away wrath, and found that smiles were more than enough to keep things civil. People treated her with the utmost courtesy, especially when she smiled at them. 

Ginger Redmayne Ironfoundersson was the unholy spawn of a werewolf and a dwarf, spent her childhood amidst Watchmen, teethed on a badge, and was known to the greater mines of the Ramtop Mountains. Between her upbringing and her (ahem) breeding, she possessed both a keen set of senses and a straightforward mind, and enough old fashioned shrewdness to know when to make a fuss. She sat up.

A pall of startled silence fell across the Watch House. Even perps pricked their ears in the hush and swiveled their heads. Ginger’s hair stood on end.

“Something’s coming,” she said abruptly, and got to her feet. She adjusted her sword belt so it hung at her waist less securely. “Something bad.”

“What is it, lassy?” Corporal Mudbasher demanded, knuckles whitening around his axe. “Is it an earth quake?”

“A fire?” someone else quavered.

“A tornado?”

“No.” Ginger turned to face the door, upper lip lifting delicately away from her teeth. At that moment the door swung open, admitting something worse than any natural disaster.

The witch ducked her head to keep the mantel from knocking off her pointy hat. “Hello, hello,” she announced. And it was an announcement. Eyes the color of steel bore into Ginger, pinning her onto the spot. “Blessings on this precinct,” she added, with a glare that promised very different accommodations could be arranged. “I would like to report a crime.”

 

Any witch worth her salt can project her personality ahead of her. Sometimes miles ahead. Ignatia, being a rather young witch, sometimes forgot to turn that aspect of herself off. She sat ramrod straight in her chair and sipped her tea, occasionally crunching through a biscuit. The tea and biscuits, to the bewilderment of the watchmen, just sort of happened. She did not request refreshment, and no one offered it to her; she took a seat at a relatively neat desk, and someone had brewed some tea, and a cup now steamed on Ignatia’s saucer. 

“Tell It To Me Again, Miss,” Dorfl rumbled. No one, living or undead, cared to deal with witches. Fortunately, golems had no sense of fear, and the threat of being turned into a frog rolled off them like lightning off ceramic. Ginger found herself watching them intently from her place on the couch. The witch was all steel, cool and unyielding, her voice a beacon of certainty. She couldn't look away.

Ignatia told it again. “My name is Ignatia Wrathine. I was ousted from my position at the circus what is in town this week in celebration—err, remembrance-- of Lord Vetinari-may-he-rest-forever. I would like to report a wrongful termination of employment.”

“Why Were You Terminated?”

“I suppose that has to do with the dead body Mr. Sonder is trying to hide.”

The watchmen tried to watch surreptitiously as Dorfl wrote this down on his big, yellow paper pad. “Tell Me About The Victim.”

“Ah, Horatio Campbell was the ringleader of my troupe.” She sipped her tea, eyes distant. “Horrible little man with a horrible little mind and a great love for drink and women. Someone killed him.”

“They Suspect You.”

“They don’t, but I am an…attractive target.” She almost said an easy target, but that was stretching the truth. “I used to do the bookkeeping and odd jobs around the place before I trained as a witch. And then afterward I still did the bookkeeping and the odd jobs, just in a pointy hat.” She sipped her tea again. “I was good for business but bad for morale, I suppose.”

“Who Killed Horatio Campbell?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea. Everyone in the circus is suspect. I didn’t have a chance to poke around before I left.”

Dorfl closed his notebook. “We Will Inquire Further. You Are Not To Leave The City.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She brushed some crumbs off her lap and stood.

She stepped out of the Watch House and into the half-hearted drizzle, unbothered thanks to the wide, waterproof brim her hat provided. She walked. She did not know the city, but she did know of someone in it, a friend of a friend, as far as witches could have friends, and she would go see her.

But first…

Ignatia paused at the mouth of an alley. “I haven’t a speck of garlic or a stick of kindling, and I haven’t so much as a drop of holy water.” She glared into the second darkest shadow on the street. “Which means that I’ll have to get _inventive_.” _And you won’t like me when I’m inventive_ , she didn’t bother to finish.

A plume of damp smoke and a dry chuckle drifted out of the shadow and the watchman stepped into the gray afternoon light. “My, you must be a joy at parties.”

“How much did you hear?”

“All of it.” He tapped an ear. “Very keen. Did you kill Campbell?”

“No. Did you?”

He blinked. He was a dour-faced man, middle aged, with a nose that had seen the business end of a fist a time or two and a gnarled scar down his face. A kind of shabbiness clung to his clothing and posture, a near-permanent 5 o’clock shadow stubbled his chin. Were she not paying attention, the term dishabille or rakish would come to mind. But she was paying attention, and what sprang to mind was _vampire_ and _suspicious bastard_. “I’m asking the questions here, miss.”

“Are you really? And what would your name be, officer?”

“Keel.”

“Try that again. And do not lie to me because I won’t like to think what I’ll do. It’s been a trying day.”

The man who was not Keel watched her for a long moment. “Vimes.”

“There it is. What makes you walk the streets under a false name? Do you have a false badge?” Her eyes glittered, and for a moment she seemed very young—that is, she looked her age. “Are you a scoundrel, on the run with only a fake identity standing between you and the hemp fandango?”

“Um, no.”

She visibly deflated. “I thought Ankh-Morpork was the city of opportunity.”

Ignoring that, he said, “Where are you headed, Miss Wrathine?”

“The Lady Sybil Free Hospital. I have a friend studying to become a doctor there.”

“Then it might interest you to know that you’re going the wrong way. Allow me to accompany you.”

They walked. Ignatia had long legs and a habit of moving like she had somewhere to go, forcing Vimes to take longer strides or scurry to keep up. They skirted more than a few trash heaps. “Why is there so much garbage?” she demanded after stepping over a particularly fragrant pile.

“Worker strike. I’ve come to understand it’s becoming quite a problem,” Vimes answered. _A problem we never had under Vetinari,_ he thought to himself. Say what you like about the late tyrant, the trash got taken out and the trains ran on time.

“What are they striking about?”

“Wages, equal-rights hiring procedures, pensions, safe work practices. Really, what are they _not_ striking about?”

“Hmm.”

“Tell me about Campbell. Did he have any enemies?”

“The man’s dead, so we know he had at least one,” Ignatia sniffed. “He had a habit of docking people’s pay without telling them until the last minute. Or he would conveniently forget to give out some wages. Especially to our trapeze artists.”

“Any reason them in particular?”

“They’re goblins.”

“Ah.”

“Campbell also had a bad habit of bedding other men’s wives. Some of the wives weren’t keen on being bedded, either.” She shot Vimes a look. “I didn’t kill him. Murder runs against everything I am as a witch. But I’m not sorry he’s gone.”

Vimes nodded and made a mental note to check up with the trapeze artists. “Do you have any other information to give me, miss?”

Ignatia thought for a long moment. “Walk softly, Mister Vimes-if-that-is-your-real-name. I was born in the circus and it made me a right bastard. Most of the carnies weren’t; they were bastards before going in.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

 

Ignatia walked to the head of the queue in front of the Lady Sybil Free Hospital and gave the receptionist a patient smile. “I’m here to see a resident? Spelly Garlick?” There was a chance Spelly wouldn’t be there that day, but Ignatia had no way of knowing her schedule without asking at the hospital anyway.

“Spelly?” the tired-looking man asked.

“First name of Esmerelda, last name of Garlick, from Lancre.”

“Ah, Esme. She’s in the Lawn Wing, should be doing her rounds.”

“Thank you,” Ignatia fished about in her pockets and dropped a round, blue river stone on his desk. The receptionist stared at it as she headed toward the Lawn Wing, at a loss. Someone, perhaps a small child, had clumsily painted a pair of eyes and a little triangle nose on the stone, and glued a length of rough twine to its other end.

The hospital smelled of harsh cleaners and harsher sicknesses, death and near-death clinging to the yellowed walls. The Lawn Wing was dedicated to surgery recovery, and Spelly was indeed making her rounds. _Going round the houses_ , Ignatia tamped down the thought. Spelly was no witch; she was a doctor, or at least she was going to be.

As if sensing a change in air pressure, Spelly straightened up from a patient moaning on his bed and turned. “Oh! Oh! Ignatia. I didn’t know you were…I mean, I’m pleased to see you, but I…How are you?” She rubbed her hands down her apron, suddenly nervous. And that was Spelly all over; competent and smart but wet behind the ears.

“I’ve been better. When do you go on break?”

“I, uh, I don’t.”

Ignatia blinked. “Beg pardon?”

“I’m just a student. I don’t really get breaks. And, you know, there’s just so much to do! I couldn’t just walk away when there’s so many who need me!”

Ignatia looked around at the groaning, motionless patients. “They seem fine enough on their own.” She didn’t see any doctors. Or nurses. Or other students. “And they’re making you work all on your own?”

“Well, I mean, you know, there’s a lot of patients who need extra help in the OR, and the ER is a right mess. So I’m just here. We do our best.”

“Spelly, I need you to listen very carefully.”

“I’m listening, Ignatia.”

“In the past six hours I’ve been sacked, accused of murder, interrogated and stalked by a vampire. I would very much like a hot cup of tea, some advice, and a quiet place to have a little cry. And if anyone tells you off for neglecting your duties to have a ten minute tea break, you send them straight to me and I’ll explain the situation. Does that make sense?”

“The break room is just around the corner. Put the kettle on while I finish up.”

 

“My favorite figgin place is gone.”

Sir Samuel jumped easily three feet in the air and only narrowly avoided dropping the parcel of charts in his arms. “Bloody hells! Yes! What!?”

Vimes looked wounded. “You’re working too hard, my boy. You seem a bit…piquey. Is there a decent place to get a hot figgin in this part of town anymore?”

“No! Just let me work. Leave me in peace.”

 

The kettle whistled on the breakroom stovetop. Ignatia took it off the heat and poured hot water into two cups she had found, and steeped the tea. What was taking Spelly so long?

Cups in hand, she walked along the Lawn Wing until she found her friend perched on a patient’s bed, feeding him ice chips in small, measured spoonfuls. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Renal surgery. Um, we had an Igor take out his bad kidneys and put in a good one.”

“Your tea is getting cold.” She managed to almost keep the reproach out of her voice. Almost.

“Um, look Ignatia, I just have so much to do.” She took her cup, gave it a perfunctory sip and set it back on the saucer with a wet chatter. “There’s bedpans need emptying. Patients need rolling over. And soon it’s going to be tea time.”

Ignatia looked pointedly at her cups. “So let me help. Who needs rolling over?”

“Um! Um! I don’t think that’s—“

“You’re going to say that’s a bad idea because I’m not trained or certified or anything. All I know is I’m a witch, and as far as certifides go, you’re not certified either. And I don’t much like how this hospital operates; I might have to go speak to management.”

Spelly quaked. “Doctor Vimes’d go spare!”

Vimes again. Ignatia tucked that detail away for later. She set the tea on a nearby bedside table and rolled her sleeves up. “You know what they say about idle hands.”

Spelly frowned, and sighed, and finally relented. “Mr. Flannigan needs turning.”

“Alright! I’m on it!” Ignatia disappeared down the hall, only to reappear a couple minutes later. “Are you aware,” she said conversationally, “that your patient is three-hundred pounds?”

“Yes. Um. He can’t really turn himself so you have to do it for him.” Ignatia stared at her. “I’ll show you.”

They walked over to where Flannigan moaned on his bed. “You turn patients this big regularly?” she inquired, fastidiously polite.

“I’m just big boned!” he griped.

“Sir, I can comfortably say that you are big everything’d. Face facts,” Ignatia replied, her tone as close to kind as it ever came.

Spelly worried. Ignatia had a ferocious temper, and it was usually preceded by sweet smiles, vigorous nods of agreement and gentle tones. “See?” She took hold of the end of the sheet under Flannigan and lifted it, heaving her patient onto his side. He grunted and settled without much fuss. “Nothing to it,” she said, eager to have Ignatia’s attention on the next task. Because the witch was nodding agreeably, and she found the way the pointy hat bobbed worrisome.

“Oh yes. I see plenty. You work alone, unsupervised, over what looks like forty beds with no breaks, lifting very large patients all by yourself. Yes, my dear Esmerelda, I see alright.”

Spelly winced. “Ignatia, um, I know you’re having a bad day.”

“Yes. And I would like to spread it around. In fact, I would like to meet this Dr. Vimes and give him some food for thought.”

“Ignatia, please! You’ll get me sacked!”

“And how much does the good doctor pay you?”

She flinched. “Don’t be mad.”

“He doesn’t pay you, does he? I suspect you work for, what, tips? No, you work for experience, don’t you. Only really you’re selling your time and labor for nothing.”

“No!” Spelly snapped. “This is how you become a doctor! You do your time and you put the work in and then you get letters after your name and—“

“And what, Spelly!?” she hissed. “And then you get to begin your life? You’ll be a competent doctor after years slaving away alone? And then you’ll get to slave away, alone, but with letters after your name?” The anger drained from her face, then her shoulders, then her fists unclenched. She only looked very tired and worn. “What do I know? I’m a damn carnie, and a bad one at that. But if you dig the best ditches, your reward is a bigger shovel. And it seems to me you’ll get a shovel that’s too big for you, if you haven’t already.”

“I can handle myself.”

“That makes one of us. Do you know a place I could stay tonight?”

She blinked, taken aback by the change in subject. “I’d invite you to stay with me, but I sleep at the hospital most nights. Do you have a way to pay for lodging?”

“That was going to be my next question. I can do sums, I know my letters, I can witch pretty well and I’m a dab hand at knife throwing. Do you think I could get a job doing any of that?”

“I think you’ll find somewhere.”  
 

That night, Ginger pulled on her civilian clothes and walked down to the circus to have a look around, badge clipped to her collar under her silk scarf. She shuffled through the throngs of curious Ankh-Morpork citizens, ticket money borrowed from the tea kitty clutched in one hand.

Once inside the tent, she found a seat in the middle—not too far back, not too close, just right—and let the sounds of excited civilians and the smell of bangin’ grains and spun sugar assail her. The seats filled quickly enough so that she was eventually sandwiched with a pair of elderly patrons on one side and a cluster of young men on the other. Not the least of which, a reasonably handsome man nursing a bag of salty, buttery grains tried to watch her without appearing to watch her. He stole furtive glances at her every few minutes, all of which she politely ignored. Young men always looked at her. She couldn’t imagine why. Once the seats were filled, the lanterns were shuttered one by one, until gloom dominated the tent. The crowd hushed.

A spotlight illuminated the center ring, and a fat, stocky man in formal evening attire lifted his arms. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he boomed, voice jovial and as oil slick as his hair, “Boys and girls! Gentry and fellow common folk! Tonight, we bring you the show, of a lifetime! I bring you wonders from across the Disc! Stories of woe and terror and humor. I bring you thrills, artists of light and movement and mischief! In loving memory of the esteemed Havelock Vetinari, all mime artists have been given the night off.” Here the audience chuckled, and some of their number clapped enthusiastically. The young man beside Ginger half turned and opened his mouth as if to say something to her, but thought better of it. He contemplated his paper bag of bangin’ grains as the man in the ring continued. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself: I am Eugene Sonder, ringleader and master of ceremonies tonight. Let us begin the night with our very own, the one, the only Black Clown!”

An opaque shutter slid over the spotlight, leaving the tent in near total darkness for the human audience. Ginger’s keen eyes could make out the ringleader stepping aside and allowing a clown step into the ring and then the opaque shutter was removed. The clown wore all black with shiny brass buttons. His shoes did not flop and he did not have a bright red nose. Instead, waxen white covered his face and neck, and a dramatic black line formed an impossibly wide mouth, turned up at the corners. He painted a big fat teardrop under one eye and a big fat star under the other. And he opened his mouth. And he sang.

Ginger never heard such singing in her life. The words were in some foreign language, all vibrato with a vocal range that either plummeted to incredible lows or swung into impossible highs. It was beautiful. It was chilling. During the whole performance the audience watched with rapt attention. The young man on her left did not look at her once, his mouth slightly ajar. It was better than opera. Better than theater. It was, in short, an experience.

The trapeze artists came next, with death-defying stunts, well-practiced and carefully timed near misses and feats of acrobatic excellence that had their bewitched audience on the edges of their seats. Soon there were more clowns, this time with a slapstick comedy, interspersed with jokes that were actually funny. An illusionist took the stage next, pulling flapping pigeons out of improbable places, producing pennies from behind children’s ears and for his finale he had his scantily clad assistant lay in a box, which he sawed in half and put back together. The illusionist and his lovely assistant took a bow and then scurried offstage as the ringleader took the spotlight once again.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I bring to you tonight a rare gem indeed. Some call her the dragon lady, for she fears neither flame nor ember. Indeed, fire is such a dreadful dangerous thing, but tame as a kitten in her hands. I present you with our own, our dearest, the Astounding Florencia!”

A cord from the makeshift catwalk overhead dropped down, and Mr. Sonder, taking hold of it, sailed upward and away, tailcoat flapping behind him. A good thing, too, because all at once fire raced along the ring. Burning kerosene hit Ginger’s nose just as the flames completed a perfect circle, and from the dancing firelight a figure resplendent in red and gold sequins emerged, half of her face hidden by a white porcelain mask.

The Astounding Florencia moved like art made flesh. She danced and twisted in the flames. There were hoops of fire, at first quite large and she danced through them, but then the hoops became smaller, smaller, and smaller still. The crowd watched with bated breath, waiting for the pained shriek, waiting for her costume to catch alight. Ginger tensed, nostrils flared for the telltale scent of burnt hair, burnt flesh, burnt fabric, that never came to be. The hoops were small now, too small even for her to dance through, and she took them and threw them in the air.

One hoop, two hoops, three. Soon six flaming rings paraded in the air with Florencia juggling them all. A clown with floppy hair and floppier shoes appeared at her elbow with a glass of water. Florencia kept juggling, one handed, as she took the glass, inspected it for an agonizingly long moment, took a long pull and then returned to the task at hand as if only just remembering she were handling dangerous materials.

And then, as if by some kind of magic, she plucked the hoops from their orbit one by one and extinguished them with a stroke of a palm. A darkened hoop hit the ground. She plucked another from its orbit, the other four tossed higher than ever to give her more time to extinguish it. They soon littered the ground around her feet, smoking sleepily, except for the last hoop. _How can she hold it so casually without losing a hand?_ Ginger marveled. But hold it she did, long enough to take a dripping torch from her helpful clown partner. She tapped the hoop against the torch and flame bloomed, engulfing the head in orange and yellow. That done, she casually tossed the torch high in the air and extinguished the hoop as she did the others, caught the torch at the same time the hoop hit the ground.

The torch spun. It sailed in the air, lithe and lovely in a way the hoops were not, but the audience’s eyes were trained on the figure of Florencia herself. She danced. The torch was her partner, not merely thrown but it had a life of its own, a rhythm of bounce and rebound. Florencia flipped and rolled and sashayed and cartwheeled, one move followed by the next and gaining momentum so that she was a red and gold blur. Not once did the torch hit the ground. The handle slapped against her palm, old friends reuniting for only a fraction of a second, and then sailing away from one another again. Until the end, when the handle hit her palm and stayed. She spun, one toe hitting the ground to check her momentum, making her shoulders the epicenter, her arm a radius, the burning torch head a perimeter—another hoop of fire, made of flesh and blood and flame.

She stopped, straightened, cast the crowd a knowing look. For the first time Ginger noticed the white mask hiding half her face, with a single gap to allow her the use of the eye on that side. Florencia brought the torch to her lips as if to kiss the bare flame.

And blew fire.

A jet of white and gold arced nearly ten feet, causing the people in the front row to squeal and almost lose their eyebrows. The stunned silence lasted only a moment and then there was applause. Deafening applause, with hoots and hollering and stamping. Unlike the performers who came before her, Florencia did not take a bow. She waited, until the applause, after some minutes, abated. She flipped the torch through the air a couple times, jaunty, playful, as a man might toss a coin and catch it in one of the better neighborhoods of Ankh-Morpork. The woman who could breathe fire twirled her torch between her fingers, brought it to a stop before her face, opened her mouth wide.

“Oh gods!” the handsome young man beside Ginger gasped.

The Astounding Florencia closed her lips around the torch, the burning thing completely ensconced in her mouth. The crowd held its collective breath. When the torch reemerged, fully extinguished, she grinned at them, smoke curling lazily from between her teeth, lips unscathed.

The audience lost its mind.

And then she was shuffled offstage to make room for more clowns, this time with an attaché of elephants, camels, monkeys with little accordions, and, yes, a bear on a unicycle. Finally finding his nerve, the young man beside Ginger gave her a small smile and shook his paper bag of almost untouched bangin’ grains at her. She smiled, keeping her teeth hidden and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I had a big dinner,” she lied. Ginger was by nature an honest and straightforward person, but she considered little fibs fair game, especially when trying to spare someone’s feelings or pride.

“Do you think they have a wizard in the circus?” he asked, eyes bright. He bounced his leg nervously.

“Maybe,” she replied, and turned her attention to the camels trying to keep their balance on the elephants’ backs.

“Only there’s no way the guy with the top hat was just an illusionist.”

Ginger bit her tongue. As an honest and generally straightforward person, she tended to think the best of people. Granted, this was a major personality flaw in a copper, but it was the truth. But there was a small part of her that wished that people would think before they opened their mouths. “Illusionists must work very hard to do what they do,” she offered. “And this circus travels all across the Disc, so he must work very hard to be noticed.”

“Yeah…” The young man had the puzzled face most young men wear when they spoke to her. “Supposing he stole some tricks from a wizard, though? Would be scandalous in a city like this. Would be trouble with the University.”

“I wouldn’t like to think so.”

“What about the fire lady, huh? It’s not proper, a woman wearing nothing but a leotard made of sequins,” he prodded.

“I’m rather inclined to think that a woman who puts live torches in her mouth for a living can wear what she likes,” Ginger said mildly.

The young man stared. “Dressed like that, though? Makes you wonder what else she puts in her mouth, eh?”

Ginger frowned. “How do you mean?”

“Well, you know.”

“I don’t.”

_She really doesn’t,_ he realized. He scrutinized her inflection and face for any note of disingenuousness and found none. Only polite puzzlement. “Yeah, me neither,” he said weakly.

Ginger’s brow furrowed, bewildered. “You are a strange one, but I suppose we all have our little ways.” She turned back to watch the monkeys weaving between the elephants’ legs. “As they say, it would sure be a strange world if we were all the same.”

_She really believes that,_ the young man thought to himself. She really did.

After the show, Ginger filed out of the tent with the rest of the crowd. A dark shape detached from the throng and struck out for the wrong side of the tent, so Ginger bid the friendly young man a good night, and drifted the other way, around the big circus tent, past the small petting zoo and the line of tents marked Freak Show, to the caravans and tents beyond.

This was where the carnies lived. There were small cooking fires with people still in bangles and sequins warming their hands. Washing lines heavy with linens crisscrossed the encampment, creating a kind of maze for Ginger to duck under and walk around. Rarely did Ginger feel out of place; Ankh-Morpork was her home, and she belonged to it as much as it belonged to her. This square was familiar to her—she walked the area enough on her beat to know it like the back of her hand—but the tents and caravans made it strange. Alien. No, she realized, the tents and caravans were not to blame. It was the circus. Because a circus is its own kind of city, its own kind of people with their own little ways, their own habits and aspirations and practices that she had no part in. They had their own kind of law.

But the circus came to her city, and a crime was committed in the circus in her city, and she would investigate.

A shadow detaching itself from another shadow caught her eye and she followed it, both of them heading towards the most piquant scent that stood up against soap and starch and wood smoke. She followed her nose and ignored the prickle on the back of her neck that meant that carnies were watching her. She kept a safe distance from the figure in black, glimpsed a dingy caravan with yellowed curtains in its dinner plate windows, and Ginger ducked behind a tent so she could eavesdrop unobserved.

She heard a door squeak open and a woman say without heat, “As I live and breathe, child mine, you’ll be the death o’ me yet.”

“I had to say goodbye, Mama.” Another female voice, younger but firm, steel at its center but a little soggy around the edges. The young speaker sniffled, as one does when trying to stave off a bout of tears. “Mama, I don’t think there’s a place for me in the city.” She cleared her throat, and continued in a more even tone, “And there’s nothing I can say to tempt you to leave with me?”

Ginger pressed a hand to her mouth. That could be none other than the witch herself! Ignatia, wasn’t it? Possibly a murderer, but someone’s daughter too. “I’m in too deep now. Only way for me to leave the circus is in a pine box, as you know. You mustn’t tarry, lamb, else you’ll be leaving in a pine box, too. I gathered some of the things you left behind. Go quickly, now! Don’t look back unless you’re looking for the back of my hand! And never you mind about no place in the city for you. I never want to hear quitter talk from your mouth again.”

“No, Mama,” Ignatia promised.

“Go on then! Quickly! Sonder mustn’t catch you!”

Ignatia scurried for the shadows, hood pulled up, but once out of her mother’s line of sight slowed to a stroll. Ginger followed again at some distance. She wanted to get a look at what Ignatia had tucked under her arm, but that wasn’t to be. Luckily, though, the smell of the circus clung to Ignatia’s clothes, her hair, her very skin, making it that much easier for Ginger to tail her from a safe distance all the way to her temporary residence.


	3. Her Father's Temper, Her Mother's Steel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ignatia is nine when she attends her father’s funeral.

Ignatia is nine when she attends her father’s funeral. The circus is a tightly knit group, and almost all of the carnies attend. Copperhead is cold this time of year, with sleet slamming down on the mourners, all wearing their circus best in the most muted colors they can find. Mr. Sonder and Mr. Campbell have arranged for a pine box, almost too narrow for their purposes but they make do. They always make do.

And Ignatia’s mother, the Astounding Florencia, is weeping openly. She wears shabby blacks and dusty puces, a simple floor-length peasant dress and a moth-eaten veil, her porcelain half mask painted in black slap borrowed from the Black Clown for the occasion. Ignatia watches her weep dispassionately, and the back of her mind watches her watching her mother weep. The back of her mind, what she would eventually learn to call her second thoughts, grows restive. Anger, she realizes dully, brews there, festers like an ignored blister.

They say she has her father’s temper. And he has—had—a wicked temper, short and explosive. He is—was—an ace knife thrower, the best Mr. Campbell ever saw. Ignatia got in the habit of hiding his favorite knife set when a killing mood swept over him, or when the paycheck was good and the drink even better, or when the paycheck was bad and the drink was sour. The very back of her mind, what she would eventually learn to call her third thoughts, watches her second thoughts boil as they watch her mother weeping and say, in the placid way of third thoughts everywhere, _A wicked temper and where did it get him? He gave you a wicked temper, and where will it get you?_

Ignatia does not cry. She generally doesn’t, seeing as how crying has gotten her nowhere so far, but she especially doesn’t cry now. The sleet bites through her damask dress; the garment, borrowed from Miss Betty the Bearded Lady for the occasion and hastily hemmed with pins to make up for her (lack of) height, is too thin for this weather. She is wet, soaked to the bone, and staring into the shallow grave with its soggy pine box where her father’s body is being laid to rest. And her mother is crying her eyes out, a soaked hanky clutched to her ruined face. She is crying for the man with a wicked temper, the man responsible for the scars all the world can see, and the scars the world cannot.

A wicked temper, and where did it get him? He gave Ignatia her wicked temper, and where will it get her?

Ignatia is nine when the circus buries her father. That night her mother goes through her father’s things, gives most of the useable items away to other members of the circus, but leaves the throwing knives and her father’s best work outfit to Ignatia. “He started as a juggler, you know,” the Astounding Florencia says, with a watery smile. Ignatia opens the smooth cedar box and looks along the steel blades. “Not much money in juggling, though. Anyone can juggle; it’s hardly a skill. But knife throwing!” She gives a weak laugh. “Knife throwing has just enough danger to draw the crowds in, and you can give ‘em a patter to keep them in their seats. And vary your shows so they keep coming back, season after season.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to join the ring?” _You don’t want this life for me,_ she didn’t say.

“No, but you never know when a set of really good throwing knives is going to come in handy, my child.”

 

Ignatia is eleven when Mr. Campbell hits her for the last time.

Ignatia is hopping mad, and there is shouting on both parts, and so often she cringes and looks down when a man shouts at her but not today because her anger runs hotter than her fear.

She feels hard all over. For as long as she can remember she has watched her mother and thinks of her as a hard woman, not like stone is hard but like steel is hard. The Astounding Florencia is hard all over, except for her soft heart, which is not soft like rising dough is soft, but like gold is soft. You can leave your fingerprints on her heart, but you really need to dig in your nails to leave a lasting mark. Ignatia feels hard all over, hard like steel is hard, only it started in her heart and spiraled out.

Ignatia is hopping mad and hard from the inside out and she is shouting to be heard and Mr. Campbell’s open palm slaps the words from her mouth. Startled silence falls over the two of them like a pall. Her tongue explores the new split in her lip, and her red hot anger has gone cold, not cold like forgotten tea is cold, but like a steel pole in subzero temperatures is cold. It burns.

She tastes iron on her tongue. She feels she must be made of steel, but that means she must have been iron first, and the body remembers. The slap hurts, icy pain radiating in dull waves from her cheek, and she knows (though she doesn’t know how she knows) that that side of her face will be bone white from the blow. It hurts but she is still standing, and her Third Thoughts are watching the proceedings from somewhere too far for the anger to touch.

A short temper, and where did it get her?

“You hit me,” she says, and the cold steel of her heart is the cold steel in her voice, the transformation complete. “This time, I’ll let it slide. You will not hit me again.” She intends it as a threat but the steel in her voice makes it a promise. And for just a moment, Mr. Campbell is afraid.

 

Ignatia is eleven when she leaves the circus. A caravan of travelling teachers crosses the circus’ path and she kisses her mother goodbye and follows the teachers on foot to their next encampment. The Ramtops are chilly in the spring, with ice still choking the smaller streams and rivers, but green dominates the foothills and tight green buds line the tree branches.

Ignatia does not know what she is looking for exactly—what does a witch in disguise look like?—but she pauses at an unremarkable caravan and regards the old teacher woman with her lumpy black hat and popping knees. “Are you Miss Tick?”

“Who’s asking?” the old teacher, possibly a witch, demands.

“I want to be a witch,” Ignatia says, because she is nervous and that seems more important than her name. Miss Tick gives her a thorough once over. Ignatia doesn’t fidget.

“And why would you want to be a witch? You’ve seen them flying through the sky about their business, and you think it’s just a broomstick and some tinkly little spells?” Miss Tick wiggles her fingers in the air.

“I’d rather just the pointy hat, but I think some knowing to put underneath it would be important, too,” Ignatia says, and it is the truth. A young girl can only do so much for the circus. “I found clerical errors in the books at my parents’, erm, business but it doesn’t matter, because what do I know? I’m just a girl. But if I had a pointy hat I could tell Mr. Taft to keep his pudgy little fingers out of the cash box. And he would listen!”

“Look, a pointy hat isn’t going to solve your problems.” Miss Tick pauses as a glazed look overtakes the girl’s face. “You’re imagining a hat bossing around people, aren’t you?”

Ignatia’s eyes slide back into focus. “Maaaaaaybe.”

“Listen to me, witching isn’t easy and it’s not going to solve your problems for you. Can you even do magic?”

“Well, not as yet. I can read books, and some authors are dead so that’s a kind of necromancy, isn’t it?” Ignatia scrabbles.

Miss Tick frowns, and wonders what kind of eleven-year-old knows about necromancy. “Can you even make a shamble? Here, turn out your pockets. I’m afraid if you can’t manage a shamble you won’t make for a very good witch.” This is, of course, a quick and loose rule. Some of the greatest witches on the Disc were terrible at making shambles.

Ignatia takes a frayed shoelace from her pocket, a few ticket stubs, some sequins, a borrowed pen, a smooth river stone she was thinking of painting and a handful of salted pumpkin seeds. “Now what?”

“Keeping some interesting things about your person is a good start. Now you put them together, like so, and you read it to gauge some of the vibrations in the air.” Miss Tick demonstrates a shamble and something in Ignatia’s face falls. Her eyes dim. Her brow furrows as she takes her items and carefully strings them together. “And you’ll need a living thing,” Miss Tick adds, and hands her a small matchbox with a ladybug inside.

Ignatia’s “shamble” looks like a mess. It’s not right, and it certainly isn’t magical. “I’m sorry dear, but it looks like a wash. You’re just not witch material.”

A flash of anger passes behind Ignatia’s eyes, but it’s gone so quickly Miss Tick almost thinks she imagined it. Ignatia tucks her mess of a shamble into her pocket. “Maybe there’s some other witching I could do,” she flounders, and a desperate wheedle sneaks into her voice. “Aren’t there black dogs involved? I’m good at petting dogs!”

“You’re thinking of black cats, my dear, and no, that’s not a major part of witchcraft.” The girl looks so crestfallen Miss Tick finds herself making tea just to keep from having to look at those big, gray eyes. “It’s not all magic, either,” she continues, slipping into her teacher voice. “It’s lots of hard work, you know. There’s herbs to grow, and of course you have to know about herbs and how to use them. Then there’s going ‘round the houses, healing the sick, listening to sob stories or gossip or regular drivel. It can be right dangerous, too.”

Ignatia nods as she takes a saucer and a cup of steaming tea. “I know there’s doctoring involved.”

“Clipping toenails, checking on some older folks what live on the edges just to make sure they’re still breathing.”

Ignatia hums, sips her tea and stares out at the rolling Ramtop foothills. “And I suppose you would have to set broken bones, dress and redress wounds, that sort of thing?”

“Of course.”

“Miss Tick?”

“Yes?”

“Last year I saw a man gored to death by an angry bull.” The words come evenly, matter-of-factly, but her eyes are faraway. The Ramtop foothills are very green. “He lived for almost three days after the incident, but my company hasn’t an Igor, and our doctor has something of a fascination with poo, and so the man died. A preventable death, and not one day goes by that I don’t feel responsible.

“The year before that some of my company brought in elephants for the show, and they trained them using whips and switches and cussing and fear. And I saw the way the elephants were afraid, even of people they never met. But I also saw the way the men looked, with their whips and switches, wild and terrible and they were so glad they were doing the whipping and weren’t the ones being whipped. And I remember being helpless—what do I know? I’m just some girl!—but I feel responsible that I couldn’t stop it. I failed both those men and their elephants, and there’s nothing I can do for them now but do better in the future.

“And four years ago my mother got badly burned, and now half her face is all scars. And maybe it was unavoidable, but I was there. And I didn’t know what to do. I know nothing of herbs, or medicine, or bandaging wounds.” She tears her eyes away from the foothills and spears Miss Tick with her hard gaze. “But I know about people, and I know my sums, and I know how to read and write, and maybe I haven’t an ounce of magic in me but I also haven’t anywhere else to be. I can’t go back home until I’m better than how I am, and if that means camping on your doorstep until you teach me the squishy parts of witching then I will do it. I can’t stand to sit around while people, my people, hurt and are hurting.”

Miss Tick doesn’t see the way Ignatia’s face twists at the last syllable because her eyes are drawn to the tea cup chattering on Ignatia’s knee. “You need to hold very still just now, child,” she warns.

Ignatia glances down and sighs. “Sometimes that happens.” Her tea is boiling. Not hot, but a rolling boil—it’s a miracle the little ceramic cup hasn’t shattered. She blows on her tea and all at once the bubbling comes to a halt.

Miss Tick is staring now. “My girl, if your house were on fire, what would you take out?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“What would you take out then?”

“The fire. Wouldn’t you?” Ignatia sounds truly bewildered, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. Dawning horror seizes her face. “Is that not how everyone deals with fire? What, you all just let your houses burn to the ground and hope for the best?”

Morbid curiosity is the devil in Miss Tick. “And how do you go about taking out the fire, my girl?”

“Carefully.”

 

Ignatia is eleven when Miss Tick deposits her on Mrs. Earwig’s doorstep.

 

Ignatia is eleven when, two weeks later, Mrs. Earwig deposits her on Geoffrey Swivel’s doorstep. There is something almost desperate about the girl. She jumps when startled, and flinches when Geoffrey gently corrects her mistakes as if she expects a beating, and something about her simmers. She simmers when she learns about gardening, and she simmers when she cleans, and she simmers in general. Sometimes he finds her in the wood, throwing knives at a mostly dead tree. She is very good at it. He doesn’t comment.

Geoffrey is gentle with her. She wants to learn everything right now immediately, but witching takes patience. “I’m patient!” she promises him. She stands just this side of uncomfortably far away, so that he would have to lean to touch her. To hit her. His heart hurts. “I’m extremely patient!” she wails. “Especially when I got something to be patient at.”

“Trying to outstare Mephistopheles doesn’t count.”

Geoffrey has to assure her multiple times that she is allowed to read, but she still does her reading in secret. “You don’t come from a family of readers, I take it,” he says when he finds her in the woods with a book for the fourth time. She still clutches the thing to her chest, like he might take it from her.

“My father taught me to read. And write.”

Geoffrey tries to imagine a father reading to his little girl every night, but he cannot fathom that little girl being Ignatia. “How did he teach you?”

“Mostly by shouting ‘Learn the words’ at me and hoping for the best.” Her tone is tinder dry, her face blank, and Geoffrey gets the feeling that she is plucking the words out of the air without any need to remember her literary lessons from childhood.

“Just a wild guess here, but your family isn’t big on reading in general.”

“Reading is being idle,” she admits. “And idle hands will be put to work.”

“But reading isn’t the same as being idle.”

Ignatia blinks up at him, her face totally blank but something behind her eyes simmers. “Yes, Geoffrey.”

 

Ignatia has a mind like a steel trap, and Geoffrey finds himself getting caught up in it a time or two. “Why are there small children following you when you go around the houses?”

His pupil takes the clothes pins from her mouth as she drapes damp sheets over the clothesline. “Because I give them hard sweets.”

“And why do you give them hard sweets?”

Ignatia picks up a pair of well-darned socks while she picks her words with care. “I find one of the problems parents run into is they’re rearing children when they should be rearing adults. We already have an abundance of goofy young’uns, what we need are competent, compassionate, vivacious grownups.” The socks dangle damply from the clothesline. “One of the ways to do this is to give the kids some responsibility.”

“So you delegate some of your workload to the children too young to work in the fields, and in exchange you give them candy.”

“Also the warm glowing feeling of a job well done.” She gives him a winsome smile, and it _is_ winsome. Her face is pale with sharp cheekbones, vaguely equine, but her smile makes her appear almost handsome. Geoffrey leaves the child situation alone; there are too few witches in Lancre and the Chalk, and far too much to do. And he trusts Ignatia’s judgement.

“You’ve rearranged my bookcase,” he says later that evening. He keeps his tone neutral and watches what Ignatia does.

She sits by the window to catch the last drops of daylight as she sews a few buttons for the hopelessly arthritic. “I took some liberties; I thought the new arrangement was more visually pleasing.”

Truly it is. Geoffrey originally had his books in alphabetical order, and now they are arranged by height, with the tallest ones in the centers of the shelves and using the shorter ones on either side to remain upright. It looks good. It also looks like a book at a time going missing and then being replaced would go unnoticed. _Reading is being idle,_ he thinks. And Ignatia is never idle. But then, she delegates to younger people and is out and about, how would he know if she were idle? _What must it be like in your brain, miss?_ he wonders. _Cold and shiny and always on the move. You’ve been a witch-in-training for five minutes and already I can see you think like a corkscrew. And you always simmer._

 

Ignatia is twelve when she meets Mistress Aching. She knows her herbs and she is an adequate gardener. She can doctor and go ‘round the houses and a small crowd of teary children wave her goodbye as she borrows Geoffrey’s broom to visit the Chalk. The witches of the Disc have no hierarchy, and they certainly have no leader, and the leader they haven’t got is Mistress Aching, who lives in a shepherding hut and smells faintly of sheep and Feegles.

Mistress Aching stares at Ignatia hard for a long moment when the girl touches down, and Ignatia doesn’t fidget. She would be a poor carny indeed if simple staring made her fidget. In the safety of her head Tiffany Aching is thinking _Doesn’t she look familiar? With that beak of a nose and the dark clothing, a kind of horsey face? From behind she would look like a carnivorous flamingo._

“I heard from Miss Tick that you were a circus girl and you wanted to be a witch.”

“That is correct, Mistress Aching.”

“Please, call me Miss Tiffany. Was it a happy childhood, Ignatia?”

“I don’t know, Miss Tiffany. On account of I’m not done cookin’ yet. And I don’t know what a happy childhood looks like.”

Tiffany files that bit of information away to think on later. “Can you make a shamble?”

“Oh yes. As long as it’s not too rainy and the ladybug hasn’t executed a daring escape.”

“And being on the Chalk doesn’t bother you?” At the girl’s blank stare, Tiffany adds, “Witches are generally sensitive to geography.”

“Ah. I don’t know much about geography, I’m afraid.” Ignatia says nothing more.

Tiffany taps some loose tobacco into her pipe, taking her time with the task to give her some room to think. “Our Geoffrey says you are good with children.”

“That is kind of him.”

Tiffany watches her and realizes she hasn’t lit her pipe yet. She does so. “Are you from good people, Ignatia?”

“No, Miss.”

“Bad people, then.”

“No, Miss.” Ignatia watches the sheep for a moment, hands folded demurely in her lap. She sits very still, but something under the surface simmers, low and slow. “People is people. They do good things and they do bad things and what’s important is telling the things apart.”

“That was very profound.”

“I have been told I am a profane individual.”

Tiffany coughs as delicately as she can behind her fist. “Those are two very different things, my girl.”

“Are they?” But underneath Tiffany can see the words, _They really aren’t, Mistress Aching. Profound is just what happens when the grubbiness has been wiped off._

“Tell me about your roots, Ignatia. Do you have a last name?” _I’ll eat my hat if it’s Vetinari,_ she promises herself.

“I haven’t a last name, Miss. My father didn’t have one, as he was just plain old Ignacio the Magnificent, and my mother used to be Florencia Magillacuddy, only she left off her last name when she married. Mrs. Earwig said I should have a proper last name, if only for publishing purposes, so under duress I might sign my name as Ignatia Wrathine.

“As for roots, I haven’t many of those, either. The circus, it moves, Miss. It always moves, all across the Disc if it can. I got no culture but circus culture, no cuisine but circus cuisine, no language but what we speak now, save some cusses what my mama doesn’t know I know.”

“A good witch should know her roots.”

A small smile tugs at Ignatia’s mouth. “Then I shall have to settle for being an extraordinary witch, Miss.”

Tiffany puffs on her pipe for a long moment and lets the silence drag out until she feels ready for the next question. “Why do you want to be a witch, Miss Wrathine?”

“Pointy hats have a wide brim to keep the rain off my neck,” Ignatia replies. “But also I feel witches are better suited to…” she trails off, eyes pensive. “I saw some bad things in the circus, I don’t mind telling you. People doing bad things to other people, or to animals, or to themselves. My mama entertains hundreds of people a night, and that’s a kind of magic, but it’s not the right magic for me. I don’t want to make people do better. I know magic can’t make things right. But it can keep things from being worse, and that’s right up my alley. Geoffrey says that witches stand on the edges of things, and the circus sits on the edge of everything. The edge of society, the edge of decency, the edge of danger. Right now the circus is on the edge all by its lonesome, and soon I would like to be right there with it.”

“You love the circus, don’t you.”

“I don’t know. Does the sheep love the field? Does the bird love the sky?”

“Then let’s get started.”

 

Ignatia Wrathine is fourteen when the circus comes to town, the town being Two Shirts. She has a sack of dried herbs wrapped in brown paper parcels, a secondhand broomstick gifted to her by the duchess of Keepsake, a pair of boots that have been walking for longer than she has and are very good at it, and an assortment of interesting odds and ends in her pockets that she will probably never use for a shamble.

She also has a black pointy hat. Its brim is wide and, yes, waterproof. Somewhere during her training she also acquired several more inches in height; she towers over Mistress Aching and is in the habit of ducking when she enters most homes. Between the hat, her preference for shabby black clothing, and her newfound height, Mr. Sonder doesn’t recognize her when he fields her. “Oh, uh-uh! No witches! We don’t want any trouble.”

“What a coincidence, I don’t want any trouble either, Mr. Sonder.”

He blanches. “Cor, is it really Ignatia under that getup?”

“It is.”

He recoils, but only slightly. “We don’t hold with witches in this circus, you know that. Go back to where you come from. Go on, shoo!”

“Thank you.” She steps around him and keeps making for the center of camp using long strides so Sonder has to scurry to keep up.

The camp, as it is, should be in shambles. There should be animals about, chickens and dogs and the occasional pet goose. And there should be washing lines heavy with laundered clothing. There should be cooking fires with lushes warming their hands and gossip on their tongues. But there is not. “Where is everyone?” Ignatia demands. Where is the freak show? Where is the petting zoo? Where are the rest of the performers?

Sonder answers before his brain could catch up with his mouth. “Times is hard! Money is tight. We’ve been losing bits of the circus worse than a zombie loses body parts.”

Ignatia frowns and stops so abruptly Sonder runs into her. “Then I will need to see Mr. Campbell. I trust you will be able to locate him and have him somewhat coherent within the hour.”

“Wha—I’m not his keeper! You can’t tell me what to do you little ingrate.” He makes to grab her elbow but finds his wrist clamped in a grip like steel. Her knuckles are white, her face impassive, but something behind her eyes simmers.

“Do not touch me without my permission, Mr. Sonder, or it will go poorly for you. You will fish Mr. Campbell out of whatever whorehouse, drug den or gutter he may be occupying at the moment, you will put him in a pair of fresh trousers if the need should arise, and he will be in his tent at the same time I will be in his tent, do you understand?”

She lets go of his wrist and he holds it to his chest, biting back a whimper. “And if I don’t?” he sneers, because some concepts take a long time to take root in his brain.

Ignatia raises a single, thin eyebrow. “I assure you nothing untoward will happen to you, Mr. Sonder. I am a witch, but I am a carny first and foremost and we take care of our own.” She heaves a sigh. “And if I cannot meet with Mr. Campbell tonight, then I shall be very disappointed. And very bored. I might have to ask the Nac Mac Feegle for company.”

His face pales. “You wouldn’t. It would destroy the circus!”

Ignatia looks over the barren wasteland that should be lousy with circus detritus, people and animals. “We wouldn’t want that. Just some food for thought, Mr. Sonder. Now, I need to see to my mother and reacquaint myself with whoever is left at this godsdamned company. Thank you for your understanding, sir.”

The next hour is busy. There are sick children in the circus in need of feverfew, and sick carnies in need of cough sweets dipped in honey, and Ignatia goes ‘round the houses, only instead of houses there are some tents, a couple caravans, and a hastily made lean-to. All the while she fishes for gossip and learns about what she missed these past three years.

She would like to say that Sonder and Campbell have been busy, but that would be untrue. They have been very unbusy. Without her doing their sums and accountancy, they hired on a young man to do it for them, and he is probably to blame for the way the paychecks get leaner and leaner as the season goes by. Without her pushing for advertising, Mr. Campbell doesn’t bother with it at all, so their seats go largely unfilled. Cities change their ordinances and capacity laws all the time, and no one has been keeping track. Somewhere along the way, Mr. Campbell quit keeping up his correspondences with the secretaries in cities like Genua, Ankh-Morpork, and Bonk, meaning that the circus would likely be turned away at the gates as an unrecognized, unwanted, unlicensed company, so they quit going to those cities. To make matters worse, some of the ticket boys got it into their heads to turn away patrons of the dwarf, troll, undead and goblin persuasions; at best the circus was losing money, but at worst the circus was getting a reputation it shouldn’t be getting.

And that was just the big stuff.

Little everyday nuisances Ignatia saw to as an errand girl got ignored in her absence. Sure, there are errand boys, but they usually turn up their noses at women’s work, meaning ladders were not being properly greased, tents were not being properly darned, safety nets were not being mended as the need arose. And the carnies themselves, when faced with slim wages and an unsafe working environment, could choose to ply their talents elsewhere.

Ignatia stops by a leaky tent of one of the elderly hangers on, the mother or grandmother of the sword eater, who stepped on a nail and the circus physician patched her up with a bandage of leaf mold and animal droppings. She smiles through the charade, my yes, how I’ve grown, going on up in the world, ah-ha, the circus ain’t what it used to be, but underneath the surface she simmers. She makes a note to herself to meet with the physician when she isn’t in the mood to beat him with a crowbar.

Mr. Campbell is indeed in his tent and decent when Ignatia ducks inside. He is also tipsy and belligerent, but his pants are, thankfully, on the correct way around. “What is the meaning of this! No witches in the circus! I am firm on that!”

“Is that a new tie, Mr. Campbell? With a little gold tie clip, looks like.” Her eyes bore into him, pinning him to his little stool chair. “How is the circus?”

“Can’t complain! No one would listen,” he blusters.

“I hear money is rather tight at the moment.”

“We make do. I must ask you to leave now. And never come back. We don’t hold with witches, Ignatia, you know that.”

A lesser person might be in a killing mood. Her home is the circus, and the circus is hungry, sick, weakly and wretched, all because the man in charge could not keep it together. Ignatia is not in a killing mood. She is livid, and she has a wicked temper—her father’s temper—but she knows how to keep it leashed, how to store it and unleash it and use it for fuel. She is livid, but her face is calm, her voice cool. She is hard all over, with a heart of steel and a brain to match. The man before her is unworthy of his position, but, perhaps, not completely worthless.

She smiles. And it is a winsome smile, transforming her face into something almost handsome. “Gosh, Mr. Campbell, I’m gone for five minutes and this place falls apart. I think I’ll stay on, and, you will agree, you want me to stay on.”

“And why would I?”

“Because I can make this circus work, Mr. Campbell. You don’t have to make do, because I can make the company do for you. Isn’t that better than scraping by?”

She watches his distaste for witches war with his love of money. “I’m listening.”

“Good man. All I need you to do is sign the documents I put in front of you, listen to any complaints about me with diplomacy, and stay the hell out of my way. And I will turn this circus around for you, Mr. Campbell.”

“Why should I believe you?” Like Sonder, Campbell sometimes needed time for a concept to take root in his brain, but the promise of greater income seemed to grease the way.

“The prodigal daughter returns home and you question my sincerity. I’m hurt, Mr. Campbell. I’m wounded. That sort of thing really cuts to the bone, you know.” Her eyes dance and she leans over his desk. “Witches are misunderstood, like us carnies. People think carnies steal their chickens when we got plenty of our own. They think we steal horses when we have more than enough of our own. Witches, like carnies, are mostly honest, upstanding people. We just want to do a little good in this world. I know you can sympathize.” Campbell nods, though he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “So give me chance, Mr. Campbell. You’ve known me since I was in pigtails, and you know I won’t let you down.”

“You have one chance, my girl,” he grunts

 

Ignatia is fourteen when she pulls the circus together. She is a witch, but she feels like a necromancer, yanking her home from a slow, painful death.

She meets the accountant first. She plies him with strong, hot tea, and chocolate biscuits. They talk about sums, and he starts to sweat when she takes out the unofficial ledgers he though he hid so well. She runs a proprietary finger down the sloppy lines of numbers and lets him squirm and sweat.

At last she looks up and says brightly “This all seems in order.” His mouth falls open in shock. “You are rather good with numbers, Jason, I’ll give you that. You have an aunt in Pseudopolis, isn’t that right?”

“Uh, yes. Yes, miss, I do. How did you know?”

“Gift of the gab, you could say. How is she?”

“Poorly, miss. She’s due for a surgery in the fall, but money is tight and a good Igor ain’t cheap.”

Ignatia nods, sympathetic. “My condolences, but I am sure the circus will do everything it can to help her. We take care of our own, Jason. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Say it.” Her eyes bore into him, cold and ruthless. “I want to hear you say it, Jason.”

“We take care of our own!”

“Glad to hear. I would hate to have doubts about your intentions. Do you do what Mr. Campbell tells you?”

“Yes, miss,” he says loyally.

“And Mr. Campbell doesn’t look too hard at your books, does he? He hates to micromanage.”

“That he does, miss. He leaves me to it.”

Ignatia nods and takes a sip of her tea. “Some things never change, Jason. I think that’s all I needed from you. Do take your biscuit, dear. Waste not, want not.” He leaps out of his seat and scrambles for the tent door. “Oh, Jason!” He stops, so close to freedom, and yet so far. Slowly he turns back to face her. “There was one more thing. Let’s see, what was it…oh yes.” And then she is before him, towering in the small space, eyes like steel glaring into him. “I know who you are. I know where you sleep. I know where your aunt lives. I know where your cousins play. I know about the incident at Seaman’s Wharf last year, and where the bodies are buried, Jason. And if I have to choose between you and the circus, Jason, the choice is already made. We take care of our own, Jason. Do you understand?”

Jason walks stiffly out of the witch’s tent, trailing biscuit crumbs, and when he gets to his little caravan he takes out the tin washtub. It is a beautiful day for washing his trousers.

Next, Ignatia sees to the physician. There are, unfortunately, no crowbars involved. Instead she speaks in low, even tones until the good doctor decides that Quirm is lovely this time of year, yes, and he shall leave immediately. She smiles sweetly and helps him pack his bags. His hands shake.

There are three ticket boys in the circus. There should be one for the petting zoo, one for the freak show and one for the main tent, but seeing as there is no zoo or freaks, three seems redundant. “There is a change in policy, my dears,” she says, pushing a tin of biscuits in their direction. “It seems you might be a bit confused. You are supposed to take people’s money and give them tickets. As all money spends the same, this would include trolls, dwarves, goblins, werewolves, vampires, squinty women with little dogs in their purses, and on and on.” The boys stare at her woodenly. “I can understand the confusion. It is a terribly complicated job, what with the counting the money and the tearing the tickets and sometimes smiling because this is a jolly little circus we have.” They stare harder. “But seats are going unfilled, and the solution, Mr. Campbell agrees, is that for every empty seat the ticket boy on duty will lose a ha’penny.”

The boys snarl, raising a cacophony of temper. Ignatia sips her tea, impassive. “That’s nice. We were thinking of letting two of you go, but that seemed a hasty decision.” Angry red faces turn white. She breaks a chocolate biscuit in half. “I wouldn’t turn you boys out of the job like that,” she promises them softly. “Not as long as you are all doing your best.”

“You don’t have the authority!” the brightest of the bunch says.

“Rupert, isn’t it? Rupert, do you see the hat on my head? This hat means that I have a great deal of authority, including but not limited to making decisions for the circus. Now, as I said, I wouldn’t want to turn any of you boys out. It wouldn’t be right. But there is always room in the goat pens for underperforming ticket boys.” The last comes out warm, and she smiles winsomely enough that only Rupert pales at the thought, and the other two stare at her with slack-jawed confusion.

“You wouldn’t,” Rupert gasps.

She flicks an imaginary piece of lint off her hat brim, still smiling. “Wouldn’t I? The circus takes care of its own, lads. And you are my little lads, make no mistake. I have a boiled sweet for the one of you who sells the most tickets, and it’s the goat pens for the one who sells the least.”

The Astounding Florencia is sitting by the tent entrance when the three boys file out, and she pokes her head inside. “Aren’t you a bit heavy-handed with them, my dear?”

“I hope so, Mama. A heavy hand is what’s needed with this lot. Spare the rod, spoil the child, as they say.”

“You would do your old father proud,” Florencia says, only a little reproachfully. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some foul play in the next few days. Competition has a way of making a young man’s head go funny.”

“We shall see.” But in the privacy of her head, Ignatia hopes there are no untoward accidents; she had plans, plans within plans, and she would need every able pair of hands she could get.

Rupert goes to the boss man, and Mr. Campbell goes to raise his voice at Ignatia, but finds himself incapable in the face of her implacable calm. “Growing pains, my dear Campbell. They will pass.”

 

Ignatia is fourteen when Rupert drops in on her damp little tent. His arms are crossed and something in his expression tells her this is not going to be a pleasant exchange. “You talk a good talk,” he says without preamble, “but I never seen you actually do any magic. None of us have.”

“I believe your job includes picking up debris and garbage from your work area, but I’ve never seen you do that either. Consider us even.”

“You’re not even a real witch, are you? You’re just some bossy little girl in a pointy hat. I got your number.”

Ignatia steeples her fingers and touches them to her lips to help her keep from smiling. “Gosh. What are you going to do now that you know the terrible truth, Rupert?”

“I’ll tell them. I’ll tell everyone.”

“To what end? Because you dislike me?”

He huffs. “You boss people around and act like you own the place. It ain’t right.”

“I can see that being told to do your job is a very difficult thing to hear.” She stands up and sweeps forward, forcing Rupert to either back out of the entryway or be bowled over.  In the scramble she hooks her arm through his in a way that would have been companionable if not for her iron grip. She smiles into his face, all teeth. “Come along, Rupert. Time is money and I haven’t much to spare.”

“Where are we going?” he demands. He digs his heel into the mushy turf, leaving long, muddy gouges in their wake.

“Why, to tell all our friends that I am no witch after all. The ignominy will surely trail me all my days and you will be seen as a kind of local hero instead of a grubby, ill-tempered buffoon. Wouldn’t that be nice?” They walk into what passes as a town square in the carny community. Ignatia takes the nearest wooden spoon and frying pan and bangs them together, grinning like a loon. “Attention! Attention! I think Rupert has something to say!” Lushes wake from their stupor. Carnies from all over the encampment meander closer for a better look. “We all know Rupert, don’t we? Doesn’t wash his hands very often, or his clothes for that matter, and he turns away perfectly good money from our shows, bless his little heart. He has something he would like to tell us all.” She beams and turns to Rupert, who is trying to shrink into the nearest tent wall. “Go on, then. Don’t be bashful! Everyone, let’s give him a round of applause.”

They do. The carnies clap vigorously, enjoying the young man’s discomfiture. He rallies when the clapping fades away and points an accusatory finger at Ignatia. “We have been misled and lied to! By this little girl! She says she’s a witch, but she never does any magic. She just tells us what to do and how to do our jobs, like that’s any of her concern. Well no more, I say! I won’t stand for it! Who’s with me?”

There are nods and a grumbling of agreement. But he looks at Ignatia and she is still grinning that terrible grin, like a cat playing with its meal just before it leaps for the kill. “Well said! Well said! Another round of applause, please!” And they do applaud, though some are hesitant and almost all are baffled. “Goodness me! I have been bested by a superior intellect! I have met my match! But consider my rebuttal.” She reaches down and lifts a stone from the ground and Rupert ducks, expecting to be brained by it. But Ignatia just holds it loosely in her palm. She holds it until the stone glows red, molten hot, and dribbles between her fingers. This close, Rupert can feel the heat of it, even as it dribbles on the damp grass and smoke curls up. The humor drains from her face when Rupert can bring his eyes up from the charred grass. “If it bothers you so much that a woman might tell you what to do, you had better make peace with yourself, because I will not leave, I will not stand idly by, and I will not be silent.”

The circus performs in Sto Lat for the first time since Ignatia left to learn witching. She is pleased to see her ticket boys hustling and jockeying, and after the show she tallies how many tickets the three sold. A pain in her ass he may be, but Rupert managed to best his competition by a satisfyingly large margin.

Martin, however, has not hustled as hard as Rupert or what’s-his-name (Tom? Tim?). She stops by the tent Martin shares with the sword eater, a very special boiled sweet in hand. “Congratulations, my lad!” she laughs when she sees him.

Martin nearly falls off his bedroll and raises his hands in front of him. “Miss Ignatia!”

She folds the sweet into his upraised palm. “Well done, I say!”

He stared at it dumbly. “What’s this?”

“Why, your prize! You outperformed Rupert and…and the squinty one.”

“Eric.”

“Eric? Are you sure? He looks like a Tom.”

“He’s Eric, ma’am.” Martin offers her a simpering smile and pops the sweet into his mouth, eager to please. “Did I really sell more tickets than Rupert?”

“Oh, by a mile,” she grins. “Keep up the good work. A few more full houses like we had today and see if you don’t get promoted to Grand Ticket Master.”

Rheumy eyes widen, previously unfound ambition blossoming. “Gosh! I didn’t know such a position existed!”

“The title was retired a long time ago, but I’m sure it could be brought back for the right individual. A few daring acts of ticket-taking heroism could show you whole new horizons.”

He sucks on his sweet, awed. “Is there a pay raise?”

“I’m sure you and Mr. Campbell can hash out the finer details should the happy opportunity arise. I would hate to be the one to put a price on glory.”

He crunches through the slivered remainder of his sweet. “This is really good, what is it?”

“Secret recipe.”

He frowns. “I…I don’t feel well.” Sweat sheens on his forehead and his eyes have a new glassy shine to them.

Ignatia nods and pushes him flat on his bedroll and, after a moment’s consideration, arranges him into the recovery position. “All that excitement has made you poorly, Martin. Sleep it off.” She plucks his favorite handkerchief from his breast pocket and by the time she steps out of his tent, her mother is waiting by the goat pens, a new goat tugging absently at its lead.

“This is unkind, child mine,” her mother murmurs, but her eyes glitter as Ignatia loosely ties Martin’s handkerchief around the goat’s neck. “Cooking poison candy and giving it to foolish boys.”

Ignatia regards the goat somberly. Its rheumy eyes are unfocused, its teeth protrude from its lips like mountains protrude from the plains, and a smell hangs about it, somehow more pungent than the smell of domesticated animals. The resemblance is uncanny. “Martin will only be sick for a few hours, a day at most.” She straightens up and plasters on her best smile, turning away from her mother because Rupert and the one supposedly named Eric plod up the beaten trail to meet her.

“What’s this all about, then?” Rupert demands, hands fisted at his sides.

“Congratulations are in order. You two sold more tickets than Martin,” she steps aside and runs an indulgent hand over the goat’s head. Rupert goes pale and turns on his heel, runs like a madman to the gods only know where.

Eric watches him fade into the distance, bewildered. “What’s gotten into him?”

“I suppose you win by default, Tom.”

“It’s Eric, actually.”

“What, are you sure? You look like a Tom.”

“Everyone says that, I don’t know why.”

 

Ignatia is fourteen when her mother can finally afford to put meat in their scubble. “I don’t know how you did it, my dear.” The Astounding Florencia beams at her daughter, as if Ignatia put the stars in the sky instead of putting a few carnies in their place.

“Mama I didn’t do much.” She thinks the meat might have come from a horse, maybe a donkey; it is unrecognizable, but it is in their pot, and she doesn’t know the last time her mother ate a meal with meat that didn’t come off an old boot.

“Nonsense, child mine. You’re a miracle worker; maybe you’ll be able to bring this old company back to its former glory, kicking and screaming if need be.”

Ignatia’s brow furrows. She really is just a child still—she seems so mature and confident when she deals with the other circus performers, but here she is still Florencia’s baby girl. “It shouldn’t have got this bad, Mama. Why don’t people just think? Everything I am doing is just common sense. But a little greed here and a little laziness or pettiness there and the whole circus comes crumbling down.”

“Great enterprises depend on small details, as they say.”

Ignatia sighs. “It oughtn’t be this way.”

“But it is.”

Something behind her daughter’s eyes simmers. “I know. But it oughtn’t be.”


	4. On the Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Susan Sto Helit lifted a small hand bell from the table and jangled it. “Unleash the children,” she intoned.  
> The children were unleashed.

“Ma’am.”

Ginger saw him, but she had to do a double take. The man was a watchman, of the vampire persuasion but with armor two decades out of date. She paused on the street. “Sir, I would like to inform you that impersonating an officer of the law is a hanging offense, and very much frowned upon besides.”

“Put your mind to ease, officer. I am, in fact, a policeman. And it’s your lucky day, as I would like to assist you with your enquiries regarding the murder of a Mr. Campbell.”

Ginger frowned. “Upon my life, sir, I have never met a man so invested in assisting with my inquiries who didn’t intend to throw a monkey wrench in the works.”

He looked over his smoked lenses and winked. “Don’t know much about vampires, do you? What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Captain Ironfoundersson.”

This time the man did a double take. “Ironfoundersson,” he said, recovering quickly. They proceeded down the street side by side. “That would be a dwarf name.”

“Good ear, sir. I am a dwarf.” She watched for the way he would size her up, but he kept his eyes forward, face stony.

“And undead. An unusual combination, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“My father was a dwarf and my mother is a werewolf. I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name?”

“Call me Keel.”

“And where is your jurisdiction, Keel?”

He bit back a grin. “The third degree and you haven’t even bought me coffee. Color me proud, captain. I have jurisdiction wherever there are policemen, and wherever there are policemen there are crimes. Talk to me about the case.”

Ginger nodded at a pair of passing trolls, who nodded back amiably enough. “Dorfl took a statement from the prime suspect, Miss Ignatia Wrathine.”

“I know of her.”

“She didn’t kill anyone.”

“How do you know?”

Ginger tapped the side of her nose. “She smells like bangin’ grains, soil, kerosene, damp straw, and animals. But not foul play. And, call it a hunch, but she strikes me as an honest sort.”

Keel’s face twisted. “Honest like a corkscrew.”

“But still honest. She said she doesn’t know who murdered Campbell.”

“I’ve been to the circus.”

“As have I.”

“And it seems to me that the one with the most to gain is Sonder.” He stepped in something that squelched and nearly lost his balance. “Has the city always been this…this?”

Ginger stepped over a moldering stack of newspapers. “There have been a few challenges in city sanitation lately,” she told him, trying to pick the most diplomatic phrasing possible.

“And by lately, you mean…?”

“The past four years or so. Off and on.”

“Captain Ironfoundersson, I don’t mind telling you that something stinks, and it’s not just the Ankh. If you go talk to Sonder I can have a proper poke around.”

“You cannot conduct police business unattended,” she almost snapped. “That is illegal, Mr. Keel. If only for my peace of mind you need to be deputized, and for that you need to talk to Commander Quirke.”

Keel blinked. “Commander _who_!?”

 

Ignatia Wrathine needed money. She had a healthy stash of savings from her time in the circus, but if her calculations could be trusted—and they could always be trusted—she would need a stable income by the end of the month. She stepped out of Mrs. Cake’s boarding house and strolled down the street, taking a mental inventory of her skills. Best to start with the obvious, she decided with a sigh. A child jogged by her and she caught him by the collar.

“Hey!”

“Hay is for horses,” she told him in her usual deadpan. She dropped a boiled sweet in one sticky palm and held up a second in front of his eyes. “Are you polite to strangers, young man?”

“Yes’m.” He stuffed the sweet in his mouth as if afraid she would take it back from him, and eyed the second hungrily.

“There is a joke shop somewhere not far from here; it’s run by a witch. It’s called Boffo’s, or something like that. Does that sound familiar?”

“Yes’m.”

She closed her fingers around the sweet and opened her hand again to show him her empty palm. “There’s candy in it for you if you can walk me there.”

 

Commander Huntington Quirke led the intrepid Ankh-Morpork police force and hoped that, one day, he would be promoted to Palace Guard, as his father before him had been. “This place is a dump,” a voice announced, accompanied by the slam of the Watch house door.

“I beg your pardon?” Quirke snapped over his coffee mug. Captain Ironfoundersson winced and the man beside her stepped forward. Ugh, vampire. Like there weren’t enough of the undead stinking up the place.

“I said I would like to be deputized,” the vampire replied.

“Oh-ho!” Quirke sneered. “Reliving our glory days are we?”

“Name’s Keel. Just Keel. If I told you my full name we’d be here all day,” Just Keel said. He had a scar down a face like stone, and an air of barely contained contempt about him. Were Quirke of a different temperament he might have sympathized. He did not.

“Well, _Just Keel_ , I’m afraid our ranks are full at the moment.” Off to the side, Ginger winced at the transparent lie.

Keel looked around the mostly empty Watch house. His gut clenched. There were barely any ashes in an ashtray that should be overflowing. There were maybe four coffee mugs in the sink—only four coffee drinkers on staff, then: not a good sign. The place should have been lousy with noise and smells and police work, but there was only Quirke at his desk and a round-faced lance-constable sweeping the floor. Keel swallowed the words he wanted to say and instead riposted with “I would like to help with the Campbell case.”

“What Campbell case?”

A muscle in Keel’s jaw twitched. “A man was murdered in the circus. The circus that is only going to be here for a couple more days.”

“The circus can handle its own crimes. We’re the _City_ Watch.”

“A crime has been committed!” Keel snapped. “A murder! The capital offense! And the circus isn’t handling its own crimes!”

“Oh look, a Black RIbboner with a bleeding heart. What’s one dead carny, eh? And the killer has been sacked, so I’m told. Job well done. Case closed.”

Keel stared at him. Quirke stared back. Then Ginger stepped around the desk and whispered in Quirke’s ear. He scowled and waved a hand. “Fine. Give him the bloody badge and to hell with it. Have your fun.”

She gave him the temporary deputy badge and the two of them left the precinct. “What did you say to him?”

Ginger shrugged. “I said that you would not rest until the case was solved to your specifications, and that if the two of us managed a clean arrest it would be a feather in his cap.”

Keel nodded. “Some things never change.”

 

Ignatia stocked shelves in Boffo’s Joke Emporium. When the shelves were as stocked as they were going to get she rearranged the window display. Then she rearranged the contents of the drawers under the till. She stared at the door, willing it to open. When it failed to do so, she took out the shop ledgers and did some light auditing.

Derek Proust jumped when the door to his workshop banged open and his mother’s new associate walked in, waving the ledgers. “Why,” she demanded in a cold, reasonable voice, “are we selling the Mishap Gewgaw Collection at cost?”

“Um,” he said eloquently. She raised an eyebrow.

“It costs seven cents to make each item, and we’re only selling them for ten cents.”

“Begging your pardon, miss, but that’s not—“

“After factoring in packaging costs, labor costs and taxes we lose out on three cents per sale.”

He cringed behind his workbench. “I thought you were just going to work the floor and learn city witching from Mum.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “Work the floor,” she echoed. “How many customers do you typically get in on any given day, Derek?”

Feeling himself on firmer ground, he answered, “About six or seven, eleven on the weekends.”

“And they all buy something, do they?”

“Well yes. Usually.”

“Usually,” she echoed dully. “Derek, how does this shop function?”

“How do you mean?”

“How do you pay your rent? And your taxes? How do you keep the lights on? Because according to these books you are so far in the hole you are staring directly at the Turtle’s shell.”

“Oh, well. Our landlord is very understanding of the market. And Captain Ginger helps us with our taxes. She’s really swell, that Captain Ginger. Oh, and Mum gets good deals on raw materials sometimes, depending on how much the dwarves and goblins need her expertise.”

“You live on the edge.”

“I mean, yes, I suppose.”

Ignatia closed the ledger. The Joke Emporium was kept together by spittle and bent paperclips. Did Mrs. Proust know? Did she care? Witches live on the edges of things, but there was the **edge** , and there was the _edge,_ and she didn’t want to dwell on the difference between the two. Wordlessly, Ignatia tucked the ledger under her arm and took to the stairs, arriving back on the floor just in time to watch the front door swing open at the tinkling sound of the bell.

 _Just a few weeks of this,_ she promised herself, pasting a smile on her face as the customers, three young boys with grubby faces, perused the shelves. _A few weeks to get your bearings, learn the city, that kid is going to stuff something in his pocket._ Sure enough, the three boys picked something small and easy to carry, walked just out of her line of sight for a moment, and then made for the door.

“Excuse me!” she barked. The three froze on the threshold and turned on their heels without any apparent intervention on their legs’ parts. Ignatia closed the distance between them in three long strides. “Are you going to pay for what you have, or am I going to have to involve your parents?”

The most foolish of the three jutted out his little jaw. “I’m not afraid of you!”

In the circus, such a ludicrous statement would be met with a very solid reason to fear anyone larger than you are. But this was not the circus, and Ignatia was no longer a carny. She lowered herself to one knee so she could be on the same level as him. “You are young and stupid, so let me make this abundantly clear. If you shoplift from me, the guilt will eat you up from the inside out. It will haunt your dreams, it will dog your steps, it will be a secret that colors every action you make from here on out. And, if you shoplift from me, I will beat your backsides black and blue so you’ll never sit down properly again. Do we understand one another.”

They scrounged in their pockets and produced enough coins to cover their new toy, yes, a Mishap Gewgaw. They ran when she took their money and, as the tinkley bell fell silent, she stared at the ten cents in her palm. She lowered her head on the counter; she needed a good lie down.

 

“What the hell happened to the Watch?” Vimes marveled. Ginger loped beside him, an innocuous presence but he wouldn’t be fooled. She was watching him even as she nodded to a passing dwarf and bid a grocer good morning.

“Layoffs and budget cuts, mostly. And there was something of a kerfuffle a few months ago.”

“A kerfuffle?”

“The government…had a shutdown for a few days. None of the public servants got paid that month, either. It was a mess.”

“Why am I only now hearing about this!?” he cried. He read the newspaper—not faithfully, but he picked it up every once in a while.

“Well, see, the clacks were down, as they are a public company, run by the government. And the newspaper didn’t publish about it outside Ankh-Morpork, not wanting to get in trouble with the Patrician. There might have been some articles about it in news elsewhere, but the whole thing wasn’t especially interesting to non-Ankh-Morporkians, Mr. Keel.”

“Not interesting! Not interesting! Wait!” A detail that had been vying for his attention started hopping up and down. “Since when does the press give one hot damn about what the Patrician thinks?”

“Since the Patrician holds fifty-one shares of the _Ankh-Morpork Times_.”

 _I’m too sober for this,_ he thought grimly to himself. “Let’s focus on the case.” _Everything else will have to wait._

The Lady Sybil Free Hospital bustled with activity. Ignatia walked to the front of the line, dropped a paperclip twisted into a little star on the receptionist’s desk, and stepped through the front door. The Lawn Wing, as she suspected, was full of moaning bodies and only one body to tend them. “Spelly, we need to talk.”

Spelly blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and managed to get it in her mouth. “Can’t talk, Ignatia. I have three new patients coming in and only one bed is ready.”

“I hope they’re not squeamish about sharing.”

“Ignatia!” Spelly screamed, or as close to screaming as Spelly could get. “Will you help me or not?”

She raised her hands in surrender. “Yes! Goodness! Tell me what to do!”

There were bedpans in need of cleaning, and patients in need of turning, and surgical incisions in need of redressing. They worked in companionable silence until the worry line on Spelly’s forehead eased.

“I quit my first job today,” Ignatia told her conversationally.

“Can you really afford to do that?”

“No. But it had to be done. I don’t think retail is for me.”

“It is a hard job.”

“I looked at their books and my soul left my body. I served five customers and I feel as if I have seen the lowest depths humanity can reach.”

“How long were you working there?”

“About three hours.”

“Um, retail is definitely not for you.”

Ignatia frowned to herself and washed her hands before pouring water for a patient who very recently lost both of his legs. “Is the hospital hiring, perchance?”

Spelly snorted, her mood lifted considerably. “You? Working as a nurse?” Ignatia shot her a pointed look. “Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t exactly have, uh, a good bedside manner.”

“I have an impeccable bedside manner!” Her legless patient gurgled unhappily and she rounded on him. “Don’t get me started on you, mister, or I’ll give you something to moan about.” He shrank into the pillows, agony temporarily forgotten. Ignatia carefully didn’t look at Ignatia. “I mean, there, there. Get well soon. Don’t pick at it.”

“What’s this then!”

Spelly paled. She actually paled. There was a tall man in the wing’s entryway. He was broad, with a stern face and a crisp white coat, and Ignatia felt she had seen someone very like him before. Her second thoughts noticed Spelly, and her third thoughts whispered _This is a woman who sees blood and bile and the very worst people have to offer all day long, and she pales for this man._

“This must be Doctor Vimes,” Ignatia concluded, drawing his attention back to her. He looked her up and down, from her shabby black dress to her shabby black hat and back down to her shabby black boots.

“No! Absolutely not! Esmerelda, I expect better of you!”

“I’m so sorry, Doctor!”

“Is something the matter, sir?”

Dr. Vimes glared at her. “Unlicensed, untrained people are never to touch the patients, and witches are strictly prohibited from practicing their craft within these walls. I must ask you to leave.”

Ignatia bit her tongue. She drew herself to her full height, adjusted her hat and strolled for the exit. She paused as she drew level with Dr. Vimes, gray eyes boring into him. “Just who do you _think_ you are?” she asked, anger boiling like ice in her chest.

His nostrils flared. “I am His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes M.D., owner and overseer for this hospital.”

She smirked, enjoying the way that such a simple expression brought even more wrathful color to his face. “And do you have any idea who I am?”

“No, madam.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” and Ignatia bolted for the exit before His Grace could call security. On her way out she told herself that Spelly would be okay. What was the point of being the princess of Lancre if you couldn’t throw your title around every once in a while?

 

Sonder had an airtight alibi. Ginger even double checked, and sure enough his poker buddies confirmed that he was with them all night and into the next morning. She tried questioning the goblin trapeze artists, but they just smiled and chattered in their own language; she knew some goblin, but could only make out one word in five. She needed to regroup.

She found Keel behind the freak show, smoking a cigar out of the wind. “Goblins didn’t know anything,” he said before she even opened her mouth.

“How did you get from there all the way over here?”

“It’s a vampire thing.” He saw her face and amended, “I’m not dismissing you. I don’t understand it myself. I can be almost in two places at once; it comes with the sensitivity to light and the occasional toothache.”

“I didn’t think you could speak goblin.”

“I am full of hidden depths,” he deadpanned. “I haven’t been able to find anything interesting, but if you have a proper sniff around we might be able to close this case before lunch.”

“Hold my things?”

“Yes ma’am,” he agreed, and turned around politely so she could change. And that was a curious thing, because he seemed to know quite a lot about werewolves. Like how they didn’t like when people watched the transformation process.

 

Ignatia ticked off city witchery and doctoring from her mental inventory of profitable skills. What next? She paused outside a building marked “Guild of Seamstresses,” took off her hat and hid it in one of the unseen pockets about her person, and marched inside. She didn’t spend the last ten years sewing hems and mending safety nets for nothing.

 

Keel turned his back again while Ginger shifted back onto two legs. She stepped back into her clothing and was buckling her sword in place when she said “I don’t think anyone here did it.”

Keel turned back around. “Show your work, captain.”

She ran a hand through her hair and tried to translate from canine to Morporkian. “By your account the murder weapon would have been something very sharp, like a dagger or a big kitchen knife, and it would have been soaked in—the b-word. The area around the tent still smells a bit like foul play, but the trail ends there. I don’t think someone would have hidden the murder weapon in the tent—too many people are in and out every day—so the killer took it with him or her. The trail is too old and trodden for me to track it farther than the egress.”

“Egress? Is that some kind of bird?”

“The exit,” she corrected evenly. “I did a circuit of the circus’ little shanty town and nothing smells strongly of human b-word.”

“This isn’t right,” Keel said slowly.

“I should say not. A man is dead.”

He checked her face for any sign of sarcasm, but only found a loyal sort of earnestness. _She really means that,_ he marveled. _A stranger, and a bastard by all accounts, is dead and she’s going to hunt down the killer and bring them to justice. Not because this is personal—it’s not—but because it’s important. Because it is the Right Thing to Do. Gods save us._ “This doesn’t strike me as an amateur killing. It looked like a crime of passion, but that can be forged by someone ruthless enough.”

“You suspect an assassin?”

“Maybe.” He rubbed at the stubble darkening his chin. “I should think that the circus would have paid for the Assassins' and Thieves' Guilds to leave them alone, though.”

Ginger nodded. “I believe travelling companies, to wit the circus, are supposed to get special permits specifically to protect them from guild affronts.”

“And I think I know just who to ask.”

 

Ignatia walked out of the Guild of Seamstresses, her face very warm. They laughed at her! They actually laughed at her, and then when she didn’t laugh too they pitied her. They pitied her! And explained what the seamstresses actually did.

Ignatia plodded through the streets, at a loss. She knew her supply of marketable skills was dwindling. The day, she grudgingly admitted, was a wash. She should go back to the boarding house, sit in the dark, and wait for tomorrow. She watched a gang of urchins sprint by, hooting and hollering and kicking a tin can along the gutter.

 _No more quitter talk,_ she chided herself, and screwed her hat back on her head. What would her mother say? Probably something scathing, followed by an idle threat of physical violence. She reached out a hand and grabbed a slower urchin by his collar.

“Hey!”

“Hay is for horses,” she replied automatically. She dropped a hard sweet in his hand and waited for him to do the necessary mental calibrations before holding a second sweet to eye level. “There’s candy in it for you if you can direct me to the nearest grammar school or daycare.”

 

“Let me talk to her. I know where she lives and it would be strange for you to show up at her current residence unannounced,” Ginger reasoned.

“Not too strange,” Vimes argued. “We’ve met before.”

That stopped Ginger in her steps. “Just Keel,” she said slowly, “how long have you been working this case?” Something in her werewolf nature snarled at the idea of a vampire, even one like Keel, being too near Ignatia.

“Trust that I am not the killer, Captain Ironfoundersson,” he sighed.

“Of course not. But it’s still illegal to conduct a police investigation without a badge.”

“I have a badge.”

“Without the badge I acquired for you for this specific case,” she shot back. “I will meet with Miss Wrathine and ask about the circus’ permits, and we can debrief tomorrow.”

Vimes shrugged, acceding defeat. “You really love the law, don’t you.”

Ginger blinked. “I love this city.” Her eyes softened. “The law is important, and I uphold the law for this city and everyone in it. Fabricati Diem, Pvnc: To protect and serve.”

Vimes could feel color rising in his cheeks in the face of such embarrassing earnestness. He had to look away or go blind. A suspicion floated to the surface of his mind and he grabbed onto it to stave off the pink silence. “Not well-travelled, are you?”

“Oh, I’ve spent a few summers in Copperhead, and I’ve been to Bonk. I had some schooling in Quirm, too. But there’s no place like Ankh-Morpork.” Only, from her mouth it sounded like “There’s no place like home.”

“No, there really isn’t. Fine. Interrogate Wrathine and meet with me tomorrow morning. You wouldn’t know a decent place to get a figgin around here, would you?”

“I’ll do you one better; there’s a dwarf bakery on the corner of Prouts and Broad Way. Their cinnamon rolls are to die for.”

“And probably deadly weaponry in and of themselves. Have a good evening, Captain Ironfoundersson.”

 

Ignatia sat in front of the Board of Directors, hands folded demurely in her lap, pointy hat tucked away under her dress. In truth, with her hair pulled back she looked like a severe teacher. The kind of teacher who disapproves of chewing gum and enforces a very strict no running policy.

The head interviewer paged through Ignatia’s application and hastily cobbled resume. “Do you have any professional experience with children, Miss Wrathine?”

“Yes.”

The silence stretched. “Could you elaborate?”

“Yes.”

The interviewer’s eyes narrowed. “Please elaborate, then.”

“Well done. I have experience working with children of all ages, and I feel my specialty lies with young’uns between the ages of eight and eleven.”

“That’s a difficult time,” one of the Board, a Master Greetling, commented.

“I feel that the whole of childhood is a difficult time, and so is adolescence and, of course, adulthood. Life is hard, Mr. Greetling. It doesn’t get easier; we just get better at it.”

“Well put,” the interviewer intoned. Ignatia, until this point, hadn’t cared to look too hard at her, but found herself now scrutinizing the teacher’s face. Delicate scars lined one cheek, as if a very thin, hard hand had struck her and left a permanent imprint. A shock of black hair disturbed her otherwise white head, but Ignatia’s gaze was drawn to the eyes. _These eyes see a great deal more than normal eyes do,_ Ignatia’s third thoughts murmured. _Mind how you tread._ “And how do you handle troublesome children?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never encountered troublesome children.”

The Board frowned at her. “Then you’ve never dealt with children, have you?” one, a Mrs. Frout, scowled.

Ignatia cocked an eyebrow at her. “If you mean, how do I deal with children who don’t always do what I want, I manage.”

“How do you manage, then?” her interviewer prodded.

“Carefully.”

The board murmured amongst themselves. Her interviewer shuffled her papers while they nattered and, when she had enough, silenced them with a look. “I believe in unusual measures, Miss Wrathine.”

“Then we are in agreement.” She smiled.

“This concludes the first part of your interview. The second half can begin whenever you are ready.”

Ignatia nodded. “I’m ready.”

Susan Sto Helit lifted a small hand bell from the table and jangled it. “Unleash the children,” she intoned.

The children were unleashed. There were fifteen in all, ranging in ages from four to fourteen. Mrs. Frout, unbeknownst to Ignatia, had handpicked these children as the most troubling youth in the school system. They never sat still, they never waited their turn to speak, and they were always either running, screaming, or hitting one another.

The Board held their breath with anticipation. Ignatia planted her elbows on her knees and watched the children mill about for a good twenty seconds before she clapped her hands. And kept clapping them. The smaller children joined in, then the older ones, and soon the whole room was clapping. Greetling found himself clapping, too, and stopped when he saw Susan hide her grin behind her hand.

“Well done!” Ignatia called, and let the clapping subside. The oldest child, what some might call a smart ass, kept clapping. She ignored him. “These are the rules: You mustn’t sit in my chair. Ever. I don’t want to see any butts on this chair.” Some giggled at the word “butts.” The oldest child, beginning to feel a fool, stopped clapping. “Rule the second: there will be no kisses. Absolutely none. And no hugs. Absolutely none of that. We are going to work very hard here. For those of you who do not know me, I am Miss Ignatia and I have a hearing disability. Does anyone know what that is.”

There was some general shouting, punctuated by Ignatia shouting “What?” at intervals. Frout leaned over to Susan. “What is she doing?”

“Watch.”

“What? What? I can’t hear you? What?”

One of the brighter, older children slowly raised his hand and the others settled down when Ignatia called on him. He blushed. “A hearing disability, um…”

Frout stared in amazement. She didn’t know this child had a volume lower than a scream. “Go on,” Ignatia encouraged.

“It’s when you can’t hear good.”

She grinned. “What’s your name?”

“Fletcher, Miss.”

“Raise your hand high, reach behind yourself and pat yourself on the back, Fletcher. A hearing disability is when you can’t hear very well. My disability is that I cannot hear whining, and I cannot hear you if you don’t raise your hand.”

“That’s not real!” the smartass cried.

“What?” Ignatia squawked at him.

“I said—“

“What?” She cupped a hand behind her ear. The young man sulked.

“I have a hard sweet for someone who can tell me what the rules are.” She ignored the various shouted answers and called on a six-year-old girl who was sitting on her heels and waving her hand in the air.

An hour passed like this. Sometimes there were sweets. Sometimes there weren’t. The rules, while clearly stated, seemed to only be enforced when it came to Ignatia’s invented disability. When her back was turned, children dropped themselves into her vacated chair. Frout was perplexed; these were children who wouldn’t sit in a chair for love or money, and there were small fights breaking out for the privilege of planting their tiny asses on the seat. When the fighting could not go ignored, Ignatia would walk behind the chair and tip the offending children onto the floor.

But the fighting was sparse. Smaller children clambered into the arms of larger children for the sake of breaking the hugging rule, and the smallest of their number wriggled into Ignatia’s arms to peck her on the cheek. “No kissing,” she chided, making no move to stop them.

The Board watched, open-mouthed, as she taught them a song for remembering the number of days in a month. Children deemed unteachable by the education community as a whole learned all the months of the year and the number of days within those months in one fell swoop. More impressively, they practiced taking turns to shout answers and none of them had started running laps around the room.

“I disapprove of her methods,” Frout growled in Susan’s ear. “She’s giving them _candy_!”

Ignatia bounced the youngest child on her hip, paying the Board no mind. “Fletcher, do you have to use the restroom?” she barked, making the child in question sit up straighter. “Go on then, now is as good a time as any. Bring a friend with you. Never mind, it looks like we’re all taking a fieldtrip to the toilet. The first person who can tell me what a ‘mass exodus’ is gets to sit in my special teaching chair when we all get back.”

Greetling shifted in his chair. “Should…should they just walk out like that?”

Susan shook herself out of her reverie. “That woman taught her ‘class’ a pragmatic skill in a fun and welcoming environment for a full twenty minutes and we had no concussions, bathroom accidents or tears.”

“What are you saying?” Frout gasped.

“I’m saying we can’t afford her!” Susan hissed.

“She threatened to give Jeffrey a thick ear!”

“Jeffrey _needs_ a thick ear!”

Frout drew herself to her full height. “I really must put my foot down, Susan. Absolutely not.” She dropped her voice to a shrill whisper. “And she looks like a witch!”

“What do you say, Greetling?”

“She is definitely an unusual choice. Doesn’t seem to give a fig for rules, either.”

“You’re joking,” Susan groaned, but she knew he wasn’t. She knew there was a hidden curriculum: obey rules or suffer. She just wished it could be replaced with a better curriculum: behave nicely and reap the rewards.

“Then it’s settled,” Frout said.

Ignatia returned to the room, her “class” filing in behind her like an improbable row of ducks. The Board got to its feet. Susan gathered up her papers and made a mental note to keep Ignatia’s resume on file; they couldn’t afford her, but Susan wasn’t above taking her on well below what she was worth. “Thank you for your time, Miss Wrathine. When we reach a decision we’ll be sure to contact you. I trust you are still at your listed address?” And that was another mark against her, another lesson in the hidden curriculum: You live under Mrs. Cake’s roof, you are strange in some way, you are not our kind of people, and we will hold that against you.

“I am. Thank you for having me.” Then she dropped to one knee and somberly bid the children have a good day. She straightened up and walked out the door, smiling and waving at the kids. The door shut behind her. And the wailing and milling about resumed, this time in earnest.

 

Ignatia trudged, tired to her soul. She knew a dismissal when she heard one, but the interview went so well! The second half went well, anyway. Granted, Greetling and Frout radiated annoying and Susan was…unnerving, but the kids she could get behind. She could make a classroom work, could take a room of children and make them better than how they were, make them think for a minute and maybe, generation by generation, something would click and the world would make sense.

She simmered. Her head hurt. Her heart hurt. She felt hard all over, and the sensation jarred with the reality in a way that made her teeth grind. She should admit defeat. Today was a wash. Tomorrow will be better.

Water trickled down her unprotected neck. Rain collected in the gutter, thick with garbage and filth, airborne moisture making the smell of poor sanitation more piquant than ever. She almost reached for her hat, but let her hand drop to her side. Let it rain. Let the water dribble down her neck and soak her clothes and make her hair cling to her scalp. It was that kind of day. She trudged in the general direction of the place that wasn’t her home.

She paused in an alley and stared at a soggy stack of moldering newspapers propped against a wall. Her brain was a tangle, so she took one of the throwing knives from the recesses of a sleeve and threw it. There must be things in this world more satisfying than the _thunk_ of a blade hitting home, but she couldn’t think of any. She threw again and again and again until all her knives were spent. She pulled them from the newspaper pile, found higher ground on the top of a lidless trashcan, and resumed her practice.

She paid no mind to the cluster of people collecting at the mouth of the alley, her brain registering them as background noise. _Thunk!_ went each knife. She turned the handles over and over in her hand, fingers snaking down the blades so she could flip them high in the air and catch them before throwing. Her mind turned, cold and shiny. _Thunk!_ She could finish the week in the city, then go down to Lancre. They always need witches there. _Thunk!_ And Miss Tiffany never passes up a helping hand on the Chalk. _Thunk!_ She could trade obs for wool and cheese. There are worse ways to be. _Thunk!_

She dropped down from the trash can and let it fall over, paying it no mind. The mouth of the alley and the street beyond was filling with people; she vaguely wondered if there was something interesting going on beyond the line of her peripheral vision. She collected her knives and stood back atop the trashcan. It was still on its side and rolled a bit underfoot. She caught her balance, took aim and threw. _Thunk!_ The city annoyed her. It didn’t make sense and nothing worked. Her mind wandered back to the School Board’s interview room. Why were Frout and Greetling even there? Why did the woman named Susan tolerate them? _Thunk!_ Surely they must have hidden talents? Or performed some brave act of teacherly heroism? _Or the education system here treasures them,_ her second thoughts cautioned her. _Or the education system is completely busted, and still limping around,_ her third thoughts added. _Thunk!_

“Excuse me!” a rather official sounding voice in the crowd said. It was a voice with elbows in it, brusque and sharp but not angry or mean. A copper kind of voice, she registered dully. Maybe something illegal happened out on the street. She hopped off the trashcan and retrieved her knives.

Someone had left a length of planking on the ground and she picked up one such plank and braced it on the curve of the trashcan. With some care, she balanced on the bowed lumber on the trash can, took aim and threw. _Thunk!_ “Excuse me!” Whatever was going on, the copper seemed to be getting closer all the time. _Thunk!_ “Bjorn Hammerfist, that better not be a betting pool I see there. It’s not? Oh good. Give my regards to the missus.” _Thunk!_ Ignatia rolled the garbage can under the plank a bit, and the crowd behind her made some appreciative noises at whatever captured their attention. She flipped the knife a few times. Maybe she could get a job as a governess. Or something in accounting? She didn’t have any kind of formal education, but she could fudge the interview and use her smallest handwriting on the application. No one need ever know. _Thunk!_

“What is the cause of—oh for goodness sake.”

Ignatia paused her ministrations and glanced over her shoulder. About thirty other pairs of eyes stared back at her, one pair belonging to the red-haired watchman she’d seen the day before. “Good evening, officer.” Ignatia flipped the blade over and let it drop safely into her sleeve.

“You are causing a disturbance in the peace,” the constable said crisply. Rain sleeted off her helmet, which gleamed even in the gloom. For that matter, most of her gleamed despite the lackluster quality of the daylight. Distracted, it took a moment for Ignatia's brain to catch up with her ears.

“I what?” She blinked at the watchman, then at the staring, slack-jawed public behind her. Several of whom were scurrying away from the long arm of the law, like cockroaches fleeing the light. “You think that I…” It finally clicked. “I’m not…doing…” She wasn’t doing anything. She was just thinking, trying to iron out the tangle in her brain, and throwing knives helped. It was mindless, something to keep her hands busy. Of course, everyone in the circus had seen her throw knives a hundred times. But she remembered Geoffrey walking into the woods and watching her throw with a strange look on his face. Even Mistress Aching had been taken aback the first time she’d seen Ignatia deep in thought, and made her promise not to show the Feegles.

Some of her dumb incredulity must have leaked into her face because the watchman sighed. She turned back to the crowd and shooed them away. Shamefaced, Ignatia collected her knives and splashed out of the alley, making the watchman hurry to keep up. _If she tries to take these off me, or say a word about concealed carrying laws, I might actually turn her into a toad._ “Miss Wrathine!” she said, suddenly at her elbow. The witch forced her features into some semblance of placidity. “I wanted to have a word about the Campbell case.”

“Of course, officer,” she replied, in tones so courteous you could bounce a quarter off of them.

The cop took in her features then, and Ignatia didn’t know how she knew, but the cop saw the dark circles under her eyes, the way her hair was disheveled from interviews and rain, the hardness of her jaw and the thinness of her lips. She seemed placid, but underneath she simmered, and someone giving more than a passing glance would pick up on it. “I know a place that does really good dwarf bread,” she blurted out.

Ignatia blinked. “I’m afraid I haven’t the teeth for dwarf bread, officer.”

“Ironfoundersson. Ginger Ironfoundersson. I know another place that does a decent cup of coffee and little buttery pastries.”

“Ah.” Ignatia found herself following Ginger, picking their way along the most convoluted route possible. Ignatia typically preferred to walk directly beside someone; walking behind made her feel like she was herding them along, but she wouldn't complain. With an effort she dragged her gaze back up to the back of Captain Ironfoundersson's head, the shine of her helmet, the way a mane of copper hair curled down to her shoulders. They splashed through alleys that led into strange streets. The people they passed all seemed to know Ginger, nodding and smiling at her in passing, and she knew most of them by name. Maybe it was tiredness playing games on Ignatia's mind, but Ginger seemed very real, very solid in a way that the rest of the city didn’t. And she seemed to fit in; there were no strangers for her here, only acquaintances she had yet to make introductions with yet.

The café was unmarked, a little hole-in-the-wall place that smelled of baked goods and strong coffee. “We call it Four Tables,” Ginger explained as they stepped inside.

“I can see why.” Indeed, four small round tables with spindly little legs and matching chairs overfilled the space.

“What would you like?”

Ignatia stared at the chalkboard menu. “Just coffee.”

“But what kind?” Ginger stared at her and so did the single barista, waiting. Seeing her at a loss, Ginger turned to the man behind the counter and ordered two beverages she called “hazelnut half-caffs, in the venti, please,” all of which was gibberish to Ignatia.

They got a table where Ginger could sit with her back to the wall and watch both the door and the backroom. The barista insisted on unloading half a dozen buns on Ginger, despite her gentle protests and the way she insisted on at least paying for them. “Captain Irondoundersson,” Ignatia said gently over her cup.

“Yes, sorry.” She smiled apologetically. It was a good smile, the kind that lights up a room. “I wanted to ask about the circus’ practices regarding the Thieves’ Guild and the Assassins’ Guild. And please, call me Ginger.”

Ignatia wrapped her hands gratefully around her tall paper cup, letting the warmth into her fingers. “I usually handle the licensing. I handled it. We would only come to Ankh-Morpork maybe once every two years, if that. I wrote to the Patrician and he sent me a permit. The company as a whole and everyone individually are protected from thieves and assassins for the duration of our stay here.” She contemplated the black coffee. “I’ll need to renew my permit now that I’m separated from the company.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure that when we find the killer they’ll ask for you back.”

“I’m sure,” Ignatia replied darkly, and drank from her cup. The coffee was fine, alien and not nearly burnt enough, but it was hot. Did she want to go back to the circus? Would she have a choice? “The killer shouldn’t be an assassin. The company is paid up; Campbell would have put the receipt somewhere in his tent.”

“Maybe an unlicensed assassin, then,” Ginger sighed. She pushed the remaining four buns to Ignatia. “Take these. Inquiries are proceeding. I’ll be sure to tell you more as more information makes itself available.”

Ignatia watched Ginger go and contemplated the remaining pastries. A small kindness, a kindness of convenience—an officer wouldn’t want to be running about burdened by pastries out in the spitting rain. She finished her coffee, pulled her hat onto her head and took the buns home in a small paper bag, tucked under one arm to keep the worst of the rain off them.

Halfway back to Mrs. Cake’s, a damp dog watched her and whined from under an eaves. “Me too,” she sympathized aloud, and it was only a few yards before she realized it was following her. It followed her, keeping a safe distance the whole time, all the way to her destination and, hating to leave even an animal out in the cold on a night like tonight, she held the door open and made inviting noises until it stepped into the foyer, bushy tail wagging nervously.

It shook itself out while she wrung the worst of the rain out of the hem of her dress. It was a rather large dog, vaguely wolf-like with long legs and short ears, but its coat was orange and thick, something of a mane growing along the top of its head, curling behind its ears. Ignatia knelt and ran an experimental hand down its flank, braced for a negative response. Its tail thumped on the floor. “Well alright then,” Ignatia muttered. She fingered its neck gingerly, wondering where its collar was. “Who do you belong to, huh?” Even rain-sodden the coat felt soft and well-maintained under her touch, the muscles strong and well-nourished underneath, the bones intact and properly cushioned. Its tongue lolled out. “Come in, then. I’ll find your home tomorrow.”

The dog followed her upstairs and down the hall into her brown room. It wagged and panted happily enough, sniffing the furniture and her sparse few possessions before curling up on the brown rug and watching her. No four-legged creature should have such intelligent eyes, Ignatia felt. She peeled her dress off and pulled on her sleeping clothes.

Tallow wasn’t cheap, and lamp oil was somewhat worse, so she blew out her candle and settled on her bed for a long night. The dog loped over to her and nosed at her hand and she petted its head until it settled back down. “At least I made a friend,” she sighed. She pulled the quilt over her and let sleep claim her for a few hours.

Ginger watched her through lupine eyes.

 

When she was small, her mother told her that one day she would meet someone important. “Like your father is to me,” she elaborated, and smiled sadly. “When they call, you will come. It won’t be a choice so much as a compulsion. And you will do anything for them, whether it’s chew through silver chainmail or swim through burning oil.”

“Because I will love them,” Ginger finished for her. She didn’t want to see her mother sad, but she couldn’t think of a tactful way to change the subject.

“Yes, you will live them. With every fiber of your being.” Her mother ran a hand through her hair, smoothing down the tangles. “And if you are very lucky, they will love you back.”

“Like father loved you back.”

Her mother swallowed. “Yes.”

Ginger watched Ignatia drift into an uneasy sleep, lupine eyes parsing her form through the darkness with ease. She wasn’t used to kindness in this form—people in the city were wary of large dogs, people outside the city doubly so. But Ignatia had coaxed her inside out of the rain. She had pet her. And this last troubled Ginger, because werewolves were not pets. They were not for petting. They were wild animals who just so happened to look like humans from time to time. But Ignatia ran a hand over her wet fur and she hadn’t even thought to growl or snap at her.

“It will be difficult,” her mother warned. “Most don’t want to stick around for longer than one moon cycle. You’ll come when they call, but they might not call on you.”

“It will hurt,” Ginger replied, a well-worn mantra of motherly advice, right along with ‘Don’t fill up on bread,’ and ‘It won’t get better if you keep picking at it.’

“It will hurt,” Angua confirmed. “But we can live through an awful lot of hurt. And you’ll be fine as long as you don’t let it harden you.”

“I won’t,” she promised.

Ginger watched Ignatia breathe. Rain pattered outside the window. Unease almost made her whine aloud; what would happen if Ignatia were the murderer? Ginger would do her job, of course, but Ignatia…

Ignatia was a witch. And someone’s daughter. She was a carny with keen knife-throwing skills, and so lost in the city it made Ginger ache from the pads of her feet to the cockles of her undead heart. And she was kind enough to share her little brown room with a large, strange dog on a dark and stormy night. She got to her feet and shifted back on two legs. She had an easier time thinking like this, an easier time separating what was personal from what was important. She perused the few possessions in the sparse room, as soundlessly as possible. There was no telling what would happen if she got caught like this.

She looked over her shoulder at the sleeping Ignatia, who murmured sleepily and rolled over to face the wall. Ginger padded to her bedside, tucked the blanket around her more securely. Then she padded out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Four Tables was a Chinese restaurant that my parents talk about sometimes.


	5. Who You Gonna Call?

The basement under the Church of the Damned still smelled of underground musk, burnt coffee and canned tomatoes. Something about the place sang to Vimes, resonated with his tired bones. The Church of the Damned did not keep religious symbols; they very adamantly did not believe in anything. They also put a copper rod on the peak of their roof, and an enterprising Igor had rigged some kind of electrical setup to take advantage of any wayward fits of pique from Cori Celesti.

Travis perched on the edge of his folding metal chair, hands loosely clasped in his lap. Vimes would bet his breastplate the man’s real name was Octavius, but real names kind of defeated the purpose of a Ribboners’ Anonymous meeting. Their eyes met briefly and Vimes felt every inch a fool, despite Travis’ kind smile and nod hello. Oh yes, Vimes remembered when they first met, when he was still green and so sick with the condition that even a modicum of patience had been enough to send Vimes into the street, gnashing his teeth and looking for a fight.

Travis stood up from his chair and clasped his hands in front of him. “Alright, I think it’s time we get started,” he said, tone unhurried. Vimes dropped into the nearest chair, set back a few feet from the circle’s perimeter, and settled in to watch the lance hit the windmill. “I’d like to get the ball rolling by welcoming you all here today. I see some new faces, and some old friends.” Again, Travis’ gaze fell lightly on Vimes’ slouched form, but didn’t linger. And that was Travis all over again; if Vimes had a mean streak a mile wide, Travis had the opposite. He remembered Sybil used to smile when he groused about these stupid meetings, and she would say “I think all of us have a little save the world in us.” He didn’t know if that was true, but he could see it in Travis, who had so much save-the-world in him that it became the Thing that made his condition bearable. Sybil had collected unwanted dragons from the gutter and nursed them back to health, and Travis collected unwanted vampires from the streets and made them think it would all be okay again, if only for an hour every Tuesday night.

Travis sat back in his chair and contemplated an ominous stain in the carpeting for a moment before going into his spiel. “I’ve been thinking a lot about redemption and forgiveness lately. If you guys are anything like me, you used to think our condition meant the end. The end of your life, the end of your relationships, the end of being a person. It’s tough, but I think I’m coming to terms with what it means to be undead. And it doesn’t mean you have to quit living.” He gave them a half smile at that, and some of the group chuckled dryly. “I’m coming to terms with the idea that I can seek forgiveness, for the things I did when I wasn’t quite myself, and for the things I left undone before the condition consumed me.” He touched his collarbone briefly, as if he could feel the hunger gnawing at him, but he dropped his hand back to his lap. There was no clawing _that_ out. “For some things, it’s too late already. Some of the people I’ve wronged are long dead. But even if I can’t ask them for forgiveness, I can do my best to redeem myself. I don’t always know how to do that, but I have all the time in the world to figure it out.

“Would anyone like to share anything on their mind today?”

Vimes never shared at these meetings. Not when he was still shaking from shrugging off the drink, not when he was freshly turned and grinding his fangs, not when he was so stricken with grief he was sick with it in a way he had never been sick before. Travis’ eyes passed over the room and did a quick double take when he saw Vimes’ treacherous hand in the air. Damn.

Vimes opened his mouth and then shut it. Damn. What now?

“Take your time,” Travis said, with his stupidly kind eyes and stupidly patient encouragement.

Vimes focused on the ominous carpet stain, but he could feel everyone’s eyes boring into him. “I don’t know if I believe in forgiveness,” he said at last. “And I’m still pretty iffy on redemption.” He patted at his pockets for something to occupy his hands, a cigar for preference, but forced them to stillness. If he could stare down an attacking dragon he could talk in a Ribboner meeting. He could bare his feelings like a man. He scrubbed a hand over his face, two-day-old stubble scraping across his palm. “I have a son. Living, thank gods. For all my faults, I never gave him my condition.” His jaw worked for a long moment. “He has all my late wife’s best traits. Her…her compassion, her kindness, her ability to remember the names of people he’s only just met. And he got my bloody-mindedness.” It hurt, like lancing an ingrown hair, but he breathed through the ache. “After my wife passed, I tried to do what I could, to raise my boy right. But I think…I used to think we were too different, but looking back I think we were too alike. Both too stubborn and ornery to listen to the other. We were always fighting, and if we weren’t screaming over the other to be heard I was working. So I guess, from his point of view, I was either shouting him down or ignoring him altogether. How is that for a home life, eh?

“It was a relief, of sorts, when he went away to med school. But I wasn’t needed anymore, not by him, not by anyone, really. So I picked up and went on holiday. But, like it always did, my holiday turned into work, and I never came back.” He squeezed his eyes shut to blot out the way the carpet fibers swam in his vision. “I travelled the Disc, like some kind of vengeful revenant, and it was months before I realized that I just…I just _left_. Without a note or a goodbye or anything. And that was the beginning of the end, looking back on it.” His hands clenched and unclenched of their own accord. “I sent him letters, post cards, little trinkets from the places I visited. Sometimes he wrote me back, sometimes he didn’t. And every time I thought…I accepted that our little family was broken. He didn’t need me, and he didn’t want me to be part of his life anymore.

“But I came back to Ankh-Morpork recently, and I don’t think I can stand to be passive anymore. I don’t know if…if he could forgive me. I can’t even forgive myself. But I want to try. Gods save me, I want to try.”

Travis visibly shook himself and shut his mouth. “Thank you for sharing…?”

Vimes pursed his mouth. “Keel.”

“Thank you for sharing, Keel. Does anyone have anything to say, or something they’d like to share?”

 

As far as soirees went, it was a pretty good one. Say anything about Antony von Lipwig, but never say he didn’t know how to throw a party. “But I will say this,” Downey murmured to his semi-captive audience. “If that man put half as much care and forethought into running this city as he did throwing this party, Ankh-Morpork would be a very different place.” Mr. Slant, Thomas Silverfish and Queen Thea nodded.

“This sounds like treason,” Dr. Vimes said. The nodding stopped.

“I wouldn’t raise my hand against the Patrician,” Downey promised, suddenly in a hurry to show his loyalty. “Believe you me, I wouldn’t raise a hand against him. But I just think it would be nice if he considered, I don’t know, repairing the bridges or cleaning up the streets.”

Queen Thea grinned toothlessly and cackled into a canape. “Bless his heart for that. My people don’t eat for shite, but we’re always warm.” Sam sipped his sherry. He wasn’t a big drinker—something about seeing his father drinking cranberry juice at cocktail parties during his childhood must have left an impression—but he sorely wished for something stronger right about now.

“The mail system has gone to pot,” Downey continued, and the other three were nodding again. “The clacks aren’t as reliable as they used to be. International relations are held together by spit and hope. The trains don’t even run on time.” He knocked back the last of his champagne and deposited the flute on the tray of a passing waiter. “I wouldn’t raise a hand against him, but something must change.” More nodding.

Vimes scoffed at the dregs of his sherry. “And who would you suggest be that change, eh Downey? I have a pile of dead leaves that haven’t made it to the compost heap; maybe we should give them a try.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Slant said. Eyes milky with the undead version of cataracts shouldn’t be able to look piercing sharp, but his managed. “Our current Patrician is ill-equipped for his current position.”

“That’s not—“

“Why not you, good doctor?” Silverfish asked.

Vimes’ face went stony. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, why not you? You already have a great deal of sway. You have the breeding—“

“Why should breeding factor—?”

 “You have properties, experience in delegating. All the guilds already hold you in high esteem –higher than Lipwig, anyway—as do Diamond King of trolls, the Low Queen of the dwarves, even Lady Margolotta has a soft spot for Sir Samuel.”

Vimes’ face had gone from stony to waxen. “Absolutely not. I am not hearing this.”

“Whyever not, Your Grace?” Slant prodded with a smirk.

“Damnit man! I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker! Give me a sick person and I’ll make them right as rain. A sick city? Fat chance.” He tacked a laugh on the end to keep the conversation light, but in the privacy of his thoughts he promised that if anyone made a move to plop him in the Oblong Office he would pack his bags and hop a train straight to Quirm. “And the city is sick, it really is, but it’s not _so_ bad, surely?”

“Oho! Do you know what I heard?” Queen Thea waggled her unkempt eyebrows and leaned in closer to whisper conspiratorially. “Our tyrant can’t even keep his own house in order.”

Silverfish frowned. “How do you mean?”

She huffed. “I mean, I have some of my girls on the inside. No one makes for a scullery maid like one o’ my urchins. I mean summa his accountants skim off the top, and summa his guards sleep on duty, and that isn’t the worst of it.” Vimes told himself he didn’t want to hear the rest, but he couldn’t seem to make his feet move from the spot. He drained his sherry. “Y’see, it’s gotten so bad the Oblong Office even has its own poltergeist.”

They absorbed this new information. “Surely not,” Downey said.

“Don’t call me a liar, Lord Assassin-man,” Queen Thea sneered. “My little lads and my little ladies leave the street in front of the Assassin’s Guild well alone, as you know, because I treasure your regard mightily.”

“I wouldn’t dream of doubting your word, Queen Thea,” Downey hurried to say. “I just mean, a poltergeist?”

“Like a ghost?” Silverfish worried.

“Could be old Vetinari from beyond the grave,” Dr. Vimes pointed out. He fixed them all with his best smile while they contemplated their hor d’oeurves. “What a time to be alive, if you’ll pardon the expression. Excuse me gentlemen, lady.” Dr. Vimes didn’t care for these soirees. He always needed a bath afterward.

Three floors above Sam’s head, Rufus Drumknott did not bother looking up from his desk blotter as another layer of fine dust cascaded down. Some weeks previous, when the trouble had begun in earnest, he erected a tarp to cover his workspace, and so he worked in neatness if not exactly in comfort. And he hoped that someone would answer his advert and do away with the malicious spirit that haunted the Oblong Office.

The advert, sadly, had been his own devising. He asked the current Patrician what he intended to do, and Lipwig responded with “Work in another room.” Drumknott found it an inelegant solution, not least because the carpet in his own office had turned gray with plaster dust. He did not rub elbows with the well-bred or the wealthy of the city, but he found himself thinking along the same lines as Lord Downey anyway. Something needed to change, and if Lipwig did not become the vehicle for that change, change would become the vehicle that mowed him down.

Drumknott rubbed a tired hand over his aching eyes. There were forms to review, taxes to manage, requests and correspondences to answer. He was a secretary, and good at pushing paper besides, but he could only do so much. He lifted his mug to his lips—it was an old thing, chipped and well-loved, with an image of Iron Girder printed on the front. A keepsake of happier times. Simpler times. And Drumknott did not consider himself a sentimental man, but tonight, like all the anniversaries of Vetinari’s death that had come before, he would don his cloak and visit the gravesite.

Plaster dust showered down on the tarp as the furniture in the Oblong Office lifted about nine inches from the floral carpeting and landed heavily. Yes, he would go to the gravesite and he would worry. He couldn’t think of what to do besides.

 

Ignatia awoke around dawn to find that the stray dog had wandered off somewhere else, leaving her bedroom door slightly ajar. She ate a roll, pulled on a her cleanest dress, stuffed her feet into her boots and, leaving her hat hidden on her person, marched out into the brave new day. She took a helpful newspaper from an unguarded doorstep and purchased the tallest, blackest coffee a rudimentary search of the surrounding neighborhood produced. She opened the paper to that day’s Help Wanted section. She sipped her scalding coffee, took a red pen from her pocket and got to work circling.

An hour and a half later found her on the doorstep of a house-turned-office, staring morosely at a hastily-painted sign. **Spirit Slayers** , it screamed in thick green letters. A box nailed by the door housed a stack of helpful pamphlets and Ignatia picked one up, skimming the cover with an eyebrow raised. _Be not afeard of ghosts!_ it said. _Be there a strange happening in your community, who should you seek askance? Spirit Slayers! Be there something unusual, and it appears menacing, who should you seek askance? Spirit Slayers!_ Well, Ignatia had no experience with the spiritual, but it seemed no one would notice. She walked inside.

 

“Find anything out, captain?” Keel asked. He bit through his apple, and Ginger noticed a half empty bag on the table and an ashtray with several stems and seeds in it.

In the privacy of her head, she thought _I learned that our prime suspect is kind to strange animals, and owns nearly nothing, and talks in her sleep._ “I visited Ignatia Wrathine’s current residence. No blood, no blood-stained clothing. And she didn’t have any incriminating paperwork. _Just faded ticket stubs and a handful of sequins on the dresser,_ she thought.

Keel nodded. “It’s the Assassins’ Guild for you and the street for me, then. We’ll meet up at the circus in two hours, pressure the carnies until someone cracks.” She gave him a long look. He cleared his throat. “If that’s okay with you, officer.”

She nodded. “You have an uncanny way of anticipating my orders, acting-constable Keel.”

He snorted and took an apple stem out of his mouth. “Don’t I just?”

 

Ignatia wandered out of the Spirit Slayers office, somehow more bewildered than she had been going in. But they hired her straightaway and sent her on an assignment to clean out a haunting at the Patrician’s Palace. Someone would normally go with her to show her the ropes, but, oddly enough, no one on the roster wanted to. If she didn’t know any better, she would say they were scared.

She showed up in the Patrician’s secretary’s office, only getting lost twice; she didn’t count her third little turnabout because it led her to a coffee place that had truly despicable swill. She bought the tallest cup of the stuff they sold and drank it happily. It reminded her of home.

The secretary, an older man, eyed her with something like incredulity. She eyed him back, and took a sip of her drink. She tried not to gauge how much the furniture in the place cost, but couldn’t help the way her mind equated the shiny mahogany desk with a new caravan, the tarp above it a new roof for the main tent, the assortment of inkwells and designer quills new wheels for the freak show. “And you’re with the Spirit Slayers,” the secretary, Drumknott, reiterated. “Only, they’ve sent every single one of their specialists and haven’t been able to do anything for the Oblong Office.”

Ah. Incompetence and hope, at last she was on familiar ground. “I’m probationary. If I can rid you of your ghost, you can pay me the amount in full and I’ll make sure my new employers receive their cut.”

Drumknott stared and took a moment to find his voice. “And their cut is…?”

“They’re supposed to take fifteen percent of every commission, sir.” She sipped her coffee. The painting on the far wall could buy new netting for under the trapeze. “Of course, if I am successful I intend to capitalize on it.”

“Capitalize on it,” Drumknott echoed. “By which you mean you’ll take 100% of the commission and then, I don’t know, charge your employers for your services?”

Her face split in a grin. “Why, Mr. Drumknott, would you say you are in possession of a devious mind?”

“No,” he answered faintly. “But I have been the custodian of a truly fiendish man for the better part of my career, my lady.”

The ceiling shuddered, showering them both in fine plaster dust. Deep cracks marred the twisted spackle work; Ignatia glared at them as the ceiling shuddered a second time. A third. “How long has this been happening?”

“Off and on for the past two years,” Drumknott told her. “It only became regular about three months ago, and in the past two weeks it’s become an urgent problem. We’ve tried everything; exorcisms from half of the churches in Ankh-Morpork, burning bundles of sage, flooding the floor with holy water, prayers, salt, mantras, bargaining. Nothing works.” He led her down the hall and up a spiral staircase.

“Have there been sudden increases of activity that drop off unexpectedly?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s just getting consistently worse all the time.”

“What does the Patrician say?”

Drumknott gave a nasty, angry little laugh. “To close off the room and be done with it. Originally he wanted to open it to the public and charge two dollars for admission, but it’s too dangerous.”

His shoes could buy her mother a new wardrobe. “Do you think it could be Vetinari’s ghost?”

He shot her a strange look and then faced forward as they stepped onto the landing. “No, miss. Curiously enough, I did not used to believe in ghosts, but I find myself believing all kinds of things lately. Through here, mind your step.”

“Thank you.” She stood on the threshold of the Oblong Office and stared at the furniture. Most of the pieces were battered but not yet broken; even as she watched the desk and a pair of chairs lifted off the carpet about nine inches, hung in the air, and dropped heavily. “Where else does this happen? No, don’t deny it, don’t invent a story. Tell me the truth, Drumknott.”

He deflated. “It’s taken hold of the Rat’s Chamber, and on rainy days the torture chamber in the basement.”

She padded into the room, stepping right in front of a chair hovering by the big picture window. “Please be careful!” he cried.

“Are you afraid, Mr. Drumknott?” she asked, almost too softly for him to hear.

“Are you not!?”

“This isn’t a dead spirit.” She plucked a book that spun through the air near her face and ran a finger down its spine.

“How do you know?”

“I know because there is a precedent.” She tossed the book aside, where it thudded and slid across an airborne side table that could have bought new shoes for all the children in her circus. She could feel it around her, simmering and sometimes coming to a boil. Oh yes, it was there on the streets, but here it was concentrated. And it was angry, ravenous, wild, electric across her synapses. Were she so inclined, she might even say it was worth cackling for. Why peruse catalogs for gingerbread houses and poison apples when this raw energy hung on the air, ripe for the taking?

She padded out the way she had come and gently closed the double doors behind her. “Miss, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Hm?” She shook herself out of her reverie. “I only wish to explain this the once, Mr. Drumknott, and explain it the once I shall. Is the Rat’s Chamber uninhabitable?”

“Not at this moment.”

“Excellent. Please send for, oh, the leaders of the top five most powerful guilds, the leader of the city Watch, the Patrician, Mrs. Proust—I can give you her address—the Archchancellor of Unseen University, an iconographer of, hah, ill-repute, the most prominent figure of the free press, and any important figures I have missed. Have them gathered in the Rat’s Chamber for supper, around seven when it’s just beginning to get dark. Yes?”

Drumknott shut his mouth with a click and shook his head, wild-eyed. “I can’t possibly do that, miss! I’m just a secretary!”

“Forgive me, I was under the impression you were the right-hand man of the tyrant of this fair metropolis.”

“I am, but—“

“Then what is the trouble?” Her gray eyes bored into him, and gods save them but she reminded him of a dead man.

“They hardly show up for the Patrician himself! What hope do I have of them coming at _my_ beck and call?”

The words hung on her tongue, _If they don’t come for you, let me at them and I will put the fear of Ignatia in them._ They hung on her tongue, but she bit them back. “If you don’t have respect, you don’t have a thing,” she said instead, picking her words with care. Oh yes, she had her father’s temper, but she didn’t need to be ruled by it. She would save it, stoke it until it burned hotter and then she would put it to work, like a blacksmith at his forge. “The thing about that little axiom, is it can mean if you don’t have respect for others, you have nothing, and if you don’t have the respect _of_ others, you have nothing. Send out the word, Drumknott. And make sure you let everyone know that the supper is completely optional, purely voluntary and in no way compulsory. And I wouldn’t hold it against you if you were to mention who else is going to be here.”

He blinked, taken aback. “Have you ever considered a career in politics, my lady?”

“I rather think I have done nothing but politics all my life, sir.” A hundred futures flashed across her eyes. She had the grip of the story now, and she needed only find where it ended. She was a witch—she could point it in the right direction, happily ever afters for everyone, hurrah. The queen of Lancre swam to mind, telling her gently over tea and scones that fairy godmothers don’t get happy endings for themselves. _Well, I didn’t agree to that,_ her second thoughts supplied, in the voice of her mother. _I didn’t sign anything. No one put anything in writing._ She walked through the corridor in long strides that cut distance like a knife through butter, forcing Drumknott to scurry to keep up. She stopped abruptly, and he jostled into her.

She nodded at the painting on the wall. “Who is that?”

He frowned. “Havelock Vetinari. Arguably our best and brightest Patrician.”

She stared up at the severe face, the hard eyes, the lines of his face. She hoped for an easier story; give her coppers swinging from chandeliers into the fray, or princesses in need of saving, or dragons with weaknesses for riddles. But those were not the stories presented to her. She was a witch, and she worked with the story in front of her, on the edges of things. “Seven pm, Drumknott. Rat’s Chamber. I want all the important people there, because there is going to be a reckoning.” _And I will need witnesses._

“Understood, ma’am.”

 

At seven the top five most powerful guild leaders sat in the Rat’s Chamber. His Grace His Excellency Sir Samuel Vimes M.D. also attended, with Queen Thea on his left and Commander Quirke on his right. Ginger Ironfoundersson sat on Quirke’s other side, there to take notes. Otto Chriek fiddled with his latest iconography contraption, William de Worde and Sacharissa de Worde murmuring softly to one another all the while. Mrs. Proust lounged in her seat, completely out of place and completely at ease while Ponder Stibbons eyed her from across the table. There was a Lady Venturi, a Lady Selachii, a Susan Sto Helit, and a handful of others. In short, the Rat’s Chamber was filled, save for one seat; the seat directly in front of the axe embedded in the table was empty. No one wanted to sit so close to it, in case there was blame to be shared and a handy weapon needed to be found.

A pale watchman in an unusual uniform and smoked lenses in front of his eyes held up the wall by the door, watching. Finally a shadow in the corner detached and walked to the head of the table. Slowly. Purposefully. She stood under the portrait of the late Havelock Vetinari and, her ears attuned to the crèche of spill words, she heard the unspoken mutters of “Doesn’t she look just like…”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you all for coming on such short notice.” She clasped her hands behind her and padded to one of the tall windows overlooking the city. “I called you all together because there is something rotten in Ankh-Morpork. Something we must put to rights tonight.”

The silence stretched, broken at last by the doors slamming open and admitting none other but the current Patrician. “Forgive me!” he laughed, flashing a grin at them all. “My, a full house in here today. I hope I haven’t missed anything.” He walked up to the empty chair and leaned on the back of it without sitting down.

“Antony von Lipwig,” Ignatia acknowledged. There was a stool in the corner, and she pulled it to the head of the table. “Please, do have a seat.”

The smile on his face faltered. “What is this all about?” he asked, but he did sit down on the stool.

“This is a trial. I believe you know Constable Keel?”

The color drained from his face and he looked to the strange watchman, who had gone to the doors and bolted them shut. He grinned, all teeth. Lipwig turned on Ignatia. “What is the meaning of this!?”

Ignatia took a breath. She felt hard all over, inside and out; her heart told her to throw him into the Oblong Office, come what may. It was angry, ravenous, wild and it would rip him apart. Her mind, though, was stronger than her heart, colder and harder, too. And it said that she was a witch, one who lived on the edge, and it was better to walk the perilous brink than to throw herself into the abyss with Lipwig in tow.

“A trial! What have I done wrong!?”

Ignatia closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. She walked slowly to the big, empty fireplace. “What have you done wrong? Nothing.”

“See, that settles it!”

“No. Your wrongdoing is nothing. It is sloth of the highest order, Mr. Lipwig. Ankh-Morpork has required action, Mr. Lipwig, and you have failed her. You have failed all of us. That is your crime.” In her seat, Susan Sto Helit tensed at Ignatia’s gentle teacher voice. Something was coming.

“Nothing!” Lipwig barked, affronted. “I have worked tirelessly for this city!”

The poker came down hard on the table, its point red hot, leaving a burnt scar on the wooden surface. Ignatia’s face was completely impassive, but something behind her eyes simmered. “Tirelessly, perhaps. I wouldn’t know. But you haven’t worked intelligently for this city. What do you know about witches, Mr. Lipwig? Close your mouth, you insipid fool. You know nothing of witches.” She nodded to Mrs. Proust. “Witches are attuned to geography. In the city, they feel the cobbles. On the Chalk, they feel the flints. In Lancre, they feel the stones what have a love of iron in them.

“Myself, I am a witch from my pointy hat down to my tired boots, and I have never felt attuned to geography, Mr. Lipwig. Only to people.” The occupants of the Rat’s Chamber watched her with rapt attention. She had them in her spell; she need only tell them the story. “But witches also have checks and balances. We have other witches, and we have people we love, and we have the land about us. We are governed, Mr. Lipwig. You are not. You live in a state of anarchy and your people have suffered, and for that there will be a reckoning, Mr. Lipwig.

“I have called you all here today because a crime has been committed. It has been committed behind closed doors, in the breaths between sleep cycles, in the slow forgetting between inaction and inaction. And now we will have light for the dark places.

“This is a trial, Mr. Lipwig. You stand accused of failing in the execution of your duty. The people around you are my witnesses. Mr. Slant is here to be your judge, Captain Ironfoundersson your jury, Constable Keel to ensure fair play. How do you plead, Mr. Lipwig?”

He laughed a long, nervous laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

Ignatia kept hold of her poker and paced the length of the table, brow furrowed. “The country of Lancre suffered under poor leadership, and the land itself rebelled until a more suitable leader took the throne.”

“A clown,” Lipwig sneered.

“A king,” Ignatia countered smoothly. “Do you know why you cannot find the fool on the chessboard, Mr. Lipwig?”

“Search me.”

“Because there are no mirrors on the pieces.” William de Worde coughed into his hand. Ignatia ignored him, pacing and turning the poker over and over absent-mindedly. “What is a fool? What is a carny? They are the ones who move the pieces, who arrange the blocks, who let us laugh at the things we daren’t cry over. There is a new line on the throne of Lancre, because the land rebelled. And now Ankh-Morpork rebels. Oh yes, she rebels.”

As if on cue, a decorative table in the corner of the room lifted slowly from the floor about nine inches, then dropped heavily back to the carpet. A susurrus of unease rippled through the room, and Lipwig was on his feet and braced against the wall so quickly his stool toppled. Ignatia paid them no mind, merely pacing back and forth. “Ankh-Morpork rebels, Mr. Lipwig. Your city bleeds. It aches and hungers and rots from the inside out, and last night you drank champagne and ate canapes.” The ceiling shuddered, raining fine dust over them all.

“It’s a trick!” Lipwig cried, stabbing an accusatory finger at Ignatia.

“Then why are you so _afraid_!” Ignatia demanded, voice so soft the civic leaders strained to hear. “In your heart you know the truth, and the guilt eats away at you.” She had the story now, held in her palm. Now to make it work for her.

“No!” he shouted. The pokers by the fireplace rattled; the windows shuddered in their frames. His eyes were wild, sweat beading his forehead. “Stop doing that!”

“I’m not doing anything,” Ignatia reasoned softly. “A witch cannot magic iron—the city rebels, Mr. Lipwig. Upon my life, I am not attuned to the stone of Lancre, or the flints of the Chalk, nor the cobbles of this city. No, I am attuned to the city itself, and I can feel it rebelling. It is hungry, Mr. Lipwig. It is hungry and it wants you in the worst way.”

“Leave me alone!” he screamed and sprinted for the doors, right into Constable Keel’s arms. He struggled against the vampire’s grip to no avail. “Hey!”

“Hay is for horses,” she deadpanned, and raised a single eyebrow. To Keel she said, “Thank you, put him on his stool.” He struggled fruitlessly. “Mr. Lipwig, please. I’m trying to give you an out. This is your last chance to do right by this city.” Sadness creeped into her implacable expression. “Take a holiday. Quirm is lovely this time of year.”

It was a possibility, but she hadn’t counted on the look of panicked madness on Lipwig’s waxen face. His lips peeled away from his teeth. “I’ll die first.”

Keel went rigid and staggered back, staring down at the dagger plunged in his chest. “Bugger,” he said weakly and then crumbled into dust.

“No!” Sir Samuel screamed, leaping to his feet. But Lipwig was already running, knocking two lit gas lamps to the floor in his haste. Then he was through the double doors and slamming them behind him.

Ignatia saw the lamps hit the ground, oil splashing across the carpet followed by flames in quick succession. Dr. Vimes and Ginger were at the double doors, trying to open them with no success—the kind of man who would walk around with a silver dagger steeped in holy water is the kind of person who knows how to jam a door shut in a hurry. The civic leaders panicked; there was screaming and crying and talk of breaking the windows.

“Oh for goodness sake!” Ignatia shouted, and the noise subsided at once, all eyes turning to her, pleading. “It’s just a bloody fire!” she bellowed, slamming her poker against the floor. There was a wall of flame between her and most of the room, and it began creeping up the legs of the table. She rolled her eyes. Well, see if she wasn’t expected to do everything around here. She stooped and scooped the flames into her palms, clicking her tongue at them until they got into line, and dropped them harmlessly into the fireplace. “Worse than the circus,” she grumbled to herself as she worked. “A little fire gets uppity and suddenly it’s the end of the world, why I never.” She snapped her fingers at a few errant flames that were eating the wallpaper and they trickled sullenly into the fireplace. “That’s what I thought.”

The job done, she smoothed her hands down her dress, screwed her hat onto her head and pulled at an empty candelabra. A section of wall slid aside. She turned to the slack-jawed room and gestured at the newfound secret exit. “Go on then. Show’s over.” They filed out in a haze of pink befuddlement. Sam Vimes paused by the table, took the axe by the handle and heaved it free. Ginger and Ignatia, the last two in the room, exchanged a glance.

“Captain Ironfoundersson, what are the chances of him finding Lipwig before we do?”

“Slim to none if we follow him, ma’am.”

“After you, then.”

 

Antony von Lipwig sprinted through the Patrician’s Palace, his palace. He didn’t know where his feet were taking him, but soon he found himself running up a spiral staircase, taking the steps two at a time. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. They were going to take away his job, his home!

_His throne._

He sobbed and slammed into a pair of double doors, hands shaking, and it took a minute to process that they were locked. He would not be done away with! He would not be forsaken! He was the Patrician! He was the tyrant! It took a few tries but his master key slid home and he turned it hard, wrenched the double doors open, flung himself inside and then shut the doors behind him. He leaned against them, panting, and the cool of the wood sank through his sweaty shirt. For a moment he caught his breath.

And then self-awareness set in. He blinked at the inside of the Oblong Office.

“No,” he whimpered, and then rushed to open the doors. “No! No!” He yanked and pulled but they didn’t budge. “No! No!” he screamed, beside himself, pounding at them as behind him the furniture moved.

A vase collided hard with the wall four inches from his face; it shattered and a shard sliced his ear open. He gasped against the sting, even as a side table hurled itself for him and he rolled to the ground. The desk was waiting, though, and would have dropped heavily on top of him if he hadn’t lunged aside. A candlestick detached itself from the wall and clobbered him over the head before he could lift his arm to stave off the blow. He screamed.

“ENOUGH!”

The furniture hung in the air, as if scenting the air, then landed on the floral carpet with pointed innocuousness, as if to say “Who, me?” Lipwig raised his head enough to see the witch, Ignatia Wrathine, walking through the Oblong Office in long strides.

But Dr. Vimes stood in her wake, and she couldn’t stop him in time before he darted around her, axe in hand. “You bastard!” he bellowed.

“No!” Ginger tackled him to the ground and the axe fell from his grip. He was a doctor, and she was a watchman, and the fight was over before it started, with her pinning him securely to the ground. “You’re a doctor!” she growled.

Dr. Vimes struggled. “He killed him! He killed him!”

“And if you kill his killer? What does that make you then?” Ginger demanded, grip firm even as the fight drained out of him. “Tell me what becomes of you, Sir Samuel, because you won’t be a doctor anymore!”

Ignatia closed her eyes against the tableau. Tiredness hammered at her, but there was still so much work to do. She exhaled slowly. “Commander Quirke.”

He shuffled into the room from the secret passage set beside the fireplace. “Yes ma’am?”

Her eyes still shut, she said, “Please escort the Duke home. See that he gets in safe and then return here. Otto Chriek?”

Otto shuffled in from behind Quirke. “Ma’am?”

“See to Constable Keel. Gather up all his dusty bits, drop him in an empty container of some sort and then bring him directly to me, so I might reanimate him at my leisure.” Her eyes drifted open and she sighed. She turned the swivel chair upright and pushed it behind the desk before settling into it. “Captain Ironfoundersson, I believe you have an arrest to make.”

Ginger nodded somberly. “Antony von Lipwig, you are under arrest for arson, attempted murder of the third degree, assault with a deadly weapon, assault on an officer of the law, resisting arrest, and generally being a nuisance.”

The rest of the Civic Leaders filed in as Ginger escorted an unprotesting Lipwig out of the double doors, which opened easily enough now that the drama was over. Ignatia planted her elbows on the desk blotter and steepled her fingers as she contemplated the assemblage of harried community pillars. “I believe it is customary for the city’s guilds to elect the next Patrician. Of course, not all the leaders of all the guilds could attend tonight, but I am sure the few of you who are here can make a decision between yourselves.”

They looked at her, at the scattered furniture about the room, at the floral carpet underfoot, but never at each other. She sympathized. “It has been a long day,” she said. She rummaged in the desk and produced a small hand bell, which she rang vigorously. A servant appeared in the doorway.

“Ah, Maurissa, isn’t it?”

The woman bobbed a curtsy. “Yes’m!”

“Will you ask the kitchens to put on a light dinner for my guests in one of the smaller dining rooms? Thank you.”

 At last Downey broke the spell. “So that’s it then?” he spluttered. “You’re just going to take the Patricianship for yourself?”

Ignatia gave him a look usually reserved for people who ask why gargling lemon juice and cream is a bad idea. “Lord Downey, do you know the name of your cobbler?”

He blinked, stumped. “Well, no.”

“Funny, that. Because I do.” Gray eyes stared through him, as if staring through his soul and finding only disappointment. “Of course, I wouldn’t want to sway the vote one way or another.” She stood up. “How you gentlemen—and ladies—vote is entirely a private matter. I hope only that this time is less disastrous than the last. Please, join me for dinner.”

Drumknott appeared at her side as they filed down the corridor. “Sir Samuel has arrived safely at home,” he informed her, falling into step beside her. “Commander Quirke is on his way back.”

She nodded. “Have him meet with the palace guards, who I noticed have been conspicuously absent tonight. I’ve no doubt he would like to know why.”

Drumknott bit back a smile. “He would like that, ma’am. Captain Ironfoundersson has Lipwig in a cell under the palace, also.”

“Excellent. Have a plate of hot food sent down to him, and a glass of wine. I will deal with him briefly.”

The civic leaders filed into the dining room behind Ignatia, looking like a line of ducklings. “But…but…a witch can’t be a Patrician!” Lady Venturi scrabbled. Some of their number nodded.

“And why is that, pray?” Mrs. Proust snapped.

Venturi wilted. “I mean…”

“Precedent!” Mr. Slant said, even as he took a seat at the table. “There is no precedent!”

“Indeed,” Ignatia said. She took an apple from a bowl on the table, settled into her seat, produced a knife from her sleeve and cut into it.

Susan Sto Helit scoffed. “There can be a donkey archbishop for the Omnians! There can be an orangutan for a librarian! There have been vampires and werewolves and trolls and all kinds in the Watch! We’ve had nothing but assassins, madmen and wealthy kleptocrats in office for years. What’s a witch to all that?” Susan glanced in Ignatia’s direction; the witch in question winked and popped another piece of apple into her mouth.

As far as dinners went, it wasn’t half bad; hastily put together and the cooks would curse her name, but it was hot and filling. And there was a great deal of wine and brandy. At one point, emboldened by three glasses of wine and natural curiosity, Mrs. de Worde sidled up to Ignatia’s elbow and asked in a stage whisper, “Ma’am, if I might be so bold, may I ask how you know Lord Downey’s cobbler?”

The uneasy conversation around the table abated and all eyes fell on the two of them. Ignatia set her glass on the table and leaned closer to Saccharissa. “Mrs. de Worde, can you keep a secret?”

“I can.”

“Glad to hear. So can I.” Satisfied, Ignatia leaned back and concentrated on her plate once more.

“Not going to give it up are you?” Lady Selachii prodded. “Or else you’ll have to kill her?”

Nervous laughter rippled across the room. Ignatia’s placid face broke into a very warm, very earnest smile. “No, my lady. Indeed I would not. I would ensure she lived a very long life.” The temperature in the room dropped as every thought turned to the ways a life could be lengthened, and the subjective nature of time, and their eyes fell on the way her knife sliced a roasted potato.

 

Captain Ironfoundersson was waiting in the Oblong Office when the dinner party broke up. Ignatia nodded to her amicably and sat behind the Patrician’s desk, now her desk. “How goes it, captain?”

Ginger nodded at the matchbox on the blotter. “Constable Keel’s remains.”

Sure enough, the matchbox had been emptied in haste and filled with gray ash. Ignatia dropped it into one of the drawers in the desk. “A dangerous man, is that Sam Vimes.”

“They both are, ma’am.”

“Hm. And would you say burning the ashes of a vampire would erase it permanently from existence?”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”

Ignatia steepled her fingers and contemplated the watchman before her. _Witches don’t get happy endings,_ she reminded herself. “There are checks and balances, captain. Even a tyrant needs to be checked regularly. Especially a tyrant.”

“Ma’am.”

“In the morning, I will send a missive to Mistress Aching, alerting her of my new status. And a similar missive to the Queen of Lancre, the Duchess of Keepsake, and a prominent medicine woman in Genua. However, there needs to be more security closer to home. How do you feel about a promotion to the palace guard?”

“No thank you.”

“It comes with a considerable pay increase, and a higher rank.”

“No thank you.”

Ignatia raised an eyebrow. “The job is also safer. You won’t be on the streets getting into fights.”

“My place is on the streets, ma’am. Do you know where we get the word ‘policeman’ from? It means man of the city.”

“I know. I need to promote _somebody_.”

“I nominate Commander Quirke. He’s been spoiling for a place on the palace guard for years.”

“Then who would you nominate to command the city Watch? You?”

“No, ma’am. My place is on the streets, as you know.”

“And I do know. I will think on it.” Ignatia rummaged through the drawers of her desk, apparently forgetting Ginger was still in the room. She unearthed a suitable pen and a sheaf of papers, arranged them before her and started writing. She glanced up after a minute. “Don’t let me keep you,” she said quietly.

Ginger turned on her heel and marched out the door, eyes burning. In the office, Ignatia dropped her pen back on the blotter and dug her fingers into her hair, feeling truly wretched for the first time since, well, since the night before. She wallowed in misery for a moment, then shook herself. She took out the matchbox and turned it over and over in her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so it looks like there'll be one more chapter. It's basically written and needs a little fleshing out. Also, if I have the time I'll put up a link for an alternative ending on my tumblr, where Ginger and Ignatia are super cute for a couple paragraphs.


	6. When the Circus Comes to Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Epilogue.

Three days later Ignatia became the Patrician legally. The circus stayed in town for a little longer than planned; it was best to capitalize on the regime change while it was fresh, and it would do well to be seen being friendly with the new Patrician. Very friendly, Ignatia noticed on closing night. The ticket takers nearly fell over themselves to usher her in, grinning and touching their hats and sweating. She strode through the milling gawkers and found a seat several rows away from the front. She watched the show from the audience for the second time in her life, a bouquet of red roses tucked under her arm.

Afterward she let the audience shuffle out, choosing to stand in one place and let them go around her, like a stone sitting in a riverbed. Mostly people didn’t recognize her; Chriek might have plastered a well-illuminated image of her on the front page of the times, but Patricians did not go to the circus, and so she must be a cheap lookalike. When she could move easily again she made her way to the back of the tent where performers liked to have a quick smoke out of the wind.

“Baby girl,” her mother chuckled when Ignatia stepped into view.

“Hi, Mama,” Ignatia said, and suddenly felt bashful. She looked down at the roses clutched in her hand.

The Astounding Florencia gave the cluster of clowns behind her a look. “Go be somewhere else, why don’t ya?” They shuffled away, almost out of earshot. Florencia smelled of kerosene and burnt hair—her buffoon of an assistant stood a bit too close at one point. She offered Ignatia her bag of chewing tobacco and her daughter shook her head, rueful.

“I think I found my place, Mama.”

“On the very top o’ the heap too,” Florencia grunted, with a nod of approval. “That’ll do my dear.”

“That’ll do?” She didn’t know what she expected, but this wasn’t it.

“Oh yes. But I must say, it were a fool thing to do. You’re in the city for five minutes and they make you their leader? Tsk, tsk, child mine. You know that just raises the bar. Now I’ll be expecting grander and grander things in the future. I sure hope you can deliver.”

“Mama, anyone ever tell you you’re so full o’ shit you squelch?”

Florencia gave a bark of laughter. “Watch that tongue, baby girl, or I’ll show you the back o’ my hand, don’t think I won’t.”

“Yes Mama.” Ignatia chewed the inside of her cheek, and Florencia waited patiently. A hubward wind kicked up, rattling some garbage in the gutter. Somewhere behind them the clowns told a joke that had them sniggering. “Mama?” There it was. “You know, you don’t have to stay with the circus. I’m not richer than Creosote or anything like that, but the Palace is lousy with rooms.”

“You must think you can make your title stick. You get that boldness from your father, you know.”

“I screwed my title to the sticking place, yes. Besides, the only suitable replacements would be a guild leader—and all the other leaders get very sensitive in case one of the others get too excited—or Sir Samuel.”

“And this Samuel?”

“He gets rather shouty when someone tries to pry him away from his hospital. He’s a workaholic—a family condition, I am given to understand. Would you like to, to leave? With me?”

“Child mine, all my life I knew I would only leave this thrice accursed circus in a pine box. And now you want me to leave in a carriage with golden wheels.”

“I peeled off as much of the gold foil as I could.”

“Don’t willfully misunderstand me. I’ll not leave the circus, child mine. Not yet. You have a place for you in the city. I’ll not lurk in the shadows like a hanger-on.”

Ignatia contemplated her bootlaces. “One year. Give me one year, and I’ll carve a place for you to stay. I only want you to be happy, Mama.”

“That’s because you’re my baby girl still. A son is a son until he takes a wife, but my daughter’s my daughter all of my life. Remember that.” She cradled Ignatia’s face between hard, rough palms, the smell of kerosene at once overwhelming and comforting. “Make this city work for you. There will be long days and late nights, but always make the city work for you and remember your little Ma.”

“Yes, Mama. I’ll see you again, and I’ll write you.” Her eyes drifted open, sparkling with mischief. “I’ll send my first correspondence with a man on a horse. And we’ll see if he can’t take this circus and put it on the metaphorical map.”

 

Two weeks after Ignatia took the tyranny, His Grace His Excellency Sir Samuel Vimes M.D. received a small parcel on his front step. A doctor of some years, he took only a cursory glance at the contents of the matchbox to determine that the ashes within belonged to a vampire. Dr. Vimes took a lancet to his fingertip and pinched the small puncture until a single, fat, red droplet of blood welled up and rolled into the ashes.

The following day the Sam Vimes-sometimes-Keel received a letter offering him the position of Commander of the Watch. He stared at the expensive stationary for a long time.

 

Vimes stood to attention and tersely declined Ignatia’s invitation to have a seat. The woman herself, a freshly appointed Patrician, prowled to the big picture window overlooking the city—her city. “Mr. Vimes, tell me what you see.”

He stared stonily out over the lopsided rooftops, the squares of yellow-lit windows, the fog that hung over the streets like a fine shroud. This, at least, he knew the answer to. “I see a well-oiled machine,” he told her, repeating from rote memorization. “All the little cogs and wheels moving to make Ankh-Morpork work.”

Ignatia exhaled sharply out her nose, unimpressed. “Whoever put that description in your head should be taken out and shot,” she replied. He blinked, taken aback.

“And what do you see, ma’am?”

“I see people. I see a city that wasn’t really made for the people in it, but the populous makes it work for them. They twist and tear down and build and rebuild, unwittingly causing problems for themselves a few years, a decade, a century down the road. But in the moment, despite their foolishness, their cunning, their short-sightedness, they make it work for them.

“The city is not a machine, Mr. Vimes. It is an organism, a wild animal. It will bite the hand that feeds it, but with the right knowledge, it can be made to heel. And it will be made to heal, one way or another.”

Vimes kept his eyes fixed on her unmoving back. “Do you love Ankh-Morpork, Lady Wrathine?”

In the glass, her reflection lifted a single eyebrow and for a moment Vimes was thirty years younger, brash and young and somehow less cynical than he should have been, standing in this very spot while someone older and wiser than Ignatia peered straight through his soul. She did not turn from her spot, but spoke to the window, to her city. “I do not love Ankh-Morpork,” she said slowly, each word picked with care before being delivered. “I have seen the Ramtop Mountains in the spring, with the creeks and rivers choked with ice. And I have seen the lights of Genua during Hogswatch. I have wandered the castle halls of Uberwald, and explored the salt flats of Muntab after a rainstorm. I have been lost in Djelibeybi and Howondaland, very nearly baptized in Omnia, escaped friendly fire in Istanzia and survived unfriendly fire in Borogravia.” She turned away from the window, eyebrow still raised. “I have travelled the Disc and seen its wonders, and I can say with certainty that there is no place like Ankh-Morpork. No, Mr. Vimes, I do not love this city, but it is my city.”

He felt the corner of his mouth threaten to quirk upward. “And what you have, you keep?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m inclined to believe that the city craves a caretaker, and so caretaker I will be.” A quick smile flashed across her features, there and then gone again, and she tapped a finger to her collarbone. “Ankh-Morpork has me, and it will keep me. For as long as needed.”

“Even though it isn’t your headache, you’re going to sit at his—at that desk and take over?” Vimes prodded.

“Ah, but this city is no more a headache than it is a machine. It is an animal to tame, a company to flip and make profitable again.”

“It’s not a game,” he said, sharply. “It’s not some kind of puzzle you can solve.”

“Solve it?” she echoed, as if tasting the words. Ignatia regained her seat and contemplated her desk blotter for a long moment, fingertips resting on her lower lip. “No, I wouldn’t wish to solve it even if it were a puzzle. I would prefer to transform it. How goes the Campbell murder case?”

Vimes floundered for a moment as he shifted gears. “It’s going cold,” he growled. “We don’t have any meaningful leads, and we don’t have enough manpower to investigate any more than what we have.”

She hummed and stared at a patch of wall a few inches above and to the left of Vimes’ ear. “A name comes to mind. See if you can find, what was it, a Rupert Taft?” She rifled through a stack of papers on her desk before pulling out a hastily written report and setting it on the top of the pile. “Yes, originally Taft but was changed to Kingston some years ago. He works for a candle maker, and my oh my, he has come into an alarming amount of money recently for a candle maker’s wages.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “If you hurry, you’ll be able to catch him before he goes home.” She returned to her stack of reports and files, bringing a new one to the top of the pile and selecting an ink pen. She scratched something in the margin and looked back up at Vimes, face coolly impassive. “Do not let me keep you,” she ordered, voice soft.

 

Vimes had to run to make it to the candle maker’s place in time. He huffed as he hurried, flagged down a man coming out of the shopfront. No sooner did he open his mouth to ask him if a Rupert Kingston was still on the clock than the man bolted. He ran, and Vimes gave chase in a dance as ancient as coppers. Something primal took over, and between one step and the next he went from some yards behind the perp to directly in front of him.

“Rupert Taft!” he grunted as he bowled him to the ground. They struggled briefly, and then Vimes had a pair of cuffs on him. “You are under arrest!”

 

Vimes noticed the way people acted around Ignatia Wrathine. They simpered for the most part, and every once and again someone would try to bully her. Bullies learned very quickly that it was safer to fawn than to bluster. She was not too shy to softly request a palace guard to show a belligerent visitor what the palatial basement looked like.

Rupert Taft did not bluster or simper. He cowered. Vimes had seen the face of true terror a handful of times, but nothing surpassed the rictus of horror that was Taft’s face when he stood in front of Ignatia’s desk.

“Rupert,” she sighed. “Why would you do such a thing?”

Unprompted, Taft spilled everything. He babbled at length about how Sonder contacted him a few months ago, how Sonder planned everything out and paid in advance. How Sonder told him that Ignatia held a grudge against him for leaving the circus, and how he would tell her where Rupert lived if he didn’t do the deed. He gabbled about the fateful night, about the spike of adrenaline, cutting into Campbell and the blood. Oh, the blood.

Sure enough, with all the gory details brought to light, Ginger produced the murder weapon, rusted and caked in dirt from where Taft hastily buried it. There was an outfit of Taft’s irredeemably spattered in hues of brown that made Vimes’ teeth ache and mood sour. Within the hour Sonder, flanked by Dorfl, joined Taft before Ignatia. He quivered with rage and pomp, making his chains jangle.

“I wanted you out!” he spat without preamble, as if setting eyes on Ignatia behind a desk set something inside of him alight. “And without that fat drunken idiot running the show, I could make the company great again.”

Ignatia raised an eyebrow and leaned forward slightly. “Great again?” she echoed, her voice like steel and something behind her eyes simmered, ready to boil.

Sonder’s lips lifted in a sneer and he jabbed an accusatory finger at her. “You let in goblins and dwarves and all sorts what we shouldn’t have any truck with. Disgusting vermin, the lot of them. That wasn’t how it used to be! And damn Campbell! Letting a witch call the shots, giving good honest work to some little girl! I’m not afraid of you.”

Ignatia exhaled slowly and sat back in her seat until her spine pressed rigidly against the back of her chair. She steepled her fingers, let the silence stretch. “I recall saying something very similar to you, Mr. Sonder. And if memory serves, you gave me a very tangible reason why I should have been afraid of you.” She watched the color drain out of his face. “In some respects, you are right. A little girl has no place running a circus. Lucky for you, I have never been a little girl. I have always, and only been, Ignatia.” She nodded at Quirke. “Take these men down to the basement cells, while I decide what to do with them.”

Quirke saluted and did what he was told without argument. For all his faults, Quirke’s lack of imagination and eagerness to please made him a damn good guard. Vimes followed Quirke and his two prisoners, not bothering to shut the door behind them. Watching Sonder and Taft escorted from the Oblong Office by a golem, a vampire and a Quirke might have been satisfying if Ginger didn’t approach Ignatia’s elbow and ask, “Oughtn’t we to alert the Assassin’s Guild? They usually dispense justice in…in situations like these.”

Ignatia watched her prized ticket boy and the terror of her childhood clink and rattle down the hallway. “No,” she decided. “This is a circus matter, and the circus takes care of their own.” Ignatia closed her eyes for a moment, mentally shaking herself from her reverie. “And I couldn’t say yet whether those two stupid bastards require justice or mercy.” Ignatia frowned up at Ginger. “That will be all, captain. Do not let me keep you.”

 

The following week Antony von Lipwig was hanged, much to the pleasure of the assembled masses. And the next day a haggard man in rich but simple clothing with a ring of rope burn around his throat rode into the circus’ encampment as if he were fleeing the Dungeon Dimensions in their entirety. “Manuel Spangler,” he told them was his name. It wasn’t the first time a man running from something joined the circus on the hoof. The Astounding Florencia walked him to the cart holding the big tent and its paraphernalia. A minute of shuffling and she produced a heavy pile of netting.

Spangler fingered it, face blank. “What do I do with this?”

“You mend that. It is the safety netting for the tightrope, and it needs reinforcing from time to time.”

“Mend it! I don’t know a thing about…” the words dried up in his throat under her raised eyebrow.

“Mr. Spangler, to do the hard jobs you need to learn to do the simple jobs. You talk a mile a minute and you ooze krisma, but that don’t mean a thing if you don’t have an eye for details. Now, you’re a smart man, smart enough, and I know you can figure out how to make that netting stronger. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a letter to write.”

He gulped and got to work.

 

There were meetings and meetings and _meetings_ , some Ignatia set up, most others set for her. She spoke with the leader of the seamstresses’ guild, and that was oddly enjoyable. Especially when Ignatia pointedly asked about the costs of thread and spools. There was a meeting with Lord Downey, who assured her his members supported her rule one-hundred percent. There was a meeting with an assortment of lords and ladies; she had tea with Ladies Rust, Venturi and Salachii and only ground her molars a little when they insisted the four of them go out to buy dresses. They smiled and simpered and eyed Ignatia’s shabby black dress and shabby black boots. There was a meeting with Lord Vimes, who looked warily around the Oblong Office.

Ignatia kept the place mostly unchanged. She had the ceiling repaired, the floor thoroughly cleaned and the furniture turned right side up. She added a map of Ankh-Morpork to an empty expanse of wall and a candy dish to the desk. For some reason this last appeared to unnerve Sir Samuel. She steepled her fingers and touched them to her mouth, contemplating him for a long moment. “I have heard some quite good things about you, Sir Samuel.”

“Ma’am?”

“Your hospital takes in all kinds, I understand. Even trolls, though I’m not sure how you heal a troll without heavy machinery.”

“Diamond-tipped drills and hope, Miss—I mean, Ma’am.”

“Indeed. And how is Spelly, forgive me, Esmerelda?”

“She is well.”

“And how do you know? She is sturdy, but you placed her in charge of an entire ward by herself. Without letters after her name and, to my perplexity, for free…?”

“She is a student,” he objected, standing a bit straighter. “We pay her in experience.”

“And what an experience it is. Do you believe that people are basically good, or basically evil?”

He frowned as he did a mental U-turn. “I mean, people are people. Some of them are bad, some of them are good. Some of them aren’t one thing or the other.”

She watched him and something behind her eyes simmered. “An interesting point of view, and one we do not share. See, I believe people are neither bad nor good. People only act. And sometimes the things they do are good, and sometimes they are not. A man can enact boundless cruelty on his fellow man and unimaginable kindness, sometimes in the same breath. Were you pleased to see Lipwig hanged?”

“It needed to be done,” he answered, voice suddenly gruff.

“But were you pleased? Did it give you a warm fuzzy feeling in the cockles of your heart? Is it a memory you treasure and keep close on rainy days?”

Vimes glanced about, fervently wishing to be anywhere but here. “I don’t…no. Ma’am. I was not pleased.”

“A woman works herself to the bone in the Lawn Wing, without breaks, assistance, camaraderie or pay. Does that please you?” They watched one another. He opened his mouth and she held up a hand. “If the next words out of your mouth fall along the lines of ‘That’s just how it’s done,’ I will be forced to action. I don’t believe in good or bad people, Lord Vimes. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say I only believe in bad people who sometimes do good things. I do not care about how you got your letters after your name. I do not care about hard work building character. I do not care about the values of poverty, or tradition, or how you run your hospital. There is a woman I know of personally working ten hour days without breaks for free, and I want to know if that puts a nice little fuzzy feeling somewhat north of your navel.”

“No.”

“Excellent. I will be watching Spelly’s career with interest, and yours as well. Have a good day.”

 

Three weeks after she took the Patricianship, Ignatia sat to tea with the important witches of the Disc, who all seemed to be of the opinion that a witch couldn’t be a tyrant as well. The youngest in the room, Ignatia made the tea and served the biscuits. After a time it became apparent that she didn’t give a single figgin what they thought, unless they thought she cackled. In which case, they should probably do something, shouldn’t they.

And if, as they filed out, Mistress Aching paused in the doorway to look over her shoulder and give Ignatia a single, deliberate nod.

Well. That’ll do.

 

Four weeks, and Lady Wrathine hosted a party celebrating a successful month in office. She smiled patiently and sipped wine and nibbled canapes, but always she watched the door for a head of red hair and the gleam of armor. That invitation must have gotten lost in the mail; she should really talk to the post office about the hiccups in the system.

 

Six weeks and Ignatia slipped from determined into melancholy. Drumknott didn’t say anything—he was a professional, and there were standards—but even if no one else saw it, he could tell. “Captain Ironfoundersson is in the foyer, ma’am.”

She nodded. “Thank you. Send her in.”

Ginger walked in, shoulders stiff and head high. “Ma’am.”

“Officer,” Ignatia countered coldly. She lifted a document. “I know what they call you, captain.”

“That makes one of us.”

Ignatia took care to flop the file face-down, where the words ‘ **Wrathine’s Lap Dog’** would be left unseen. “I have no fewer than three missives demanding you cease and desist your inquiries. It seems that with the regime change the Watch is more invigorated than ever, and, you chiefly among them, are upsetting some very important people.” She straightened some of the paperwork on her blotter. “How do you feel about a raise?”

Ginger’s mouth dropped open, and then she stomped across the room, closing the distance between them to slam her palms on the desktop. “I don’t want a raise!” she snarled.

And then Ignatia’s face was very near her own, and her lips were peeling away from her teeth and she was furious. “What do you want, then?! I can’t promote you! I can’t give you a raise! I’d put you on a task force but you’re already where you need to be!”

“I…” but what was there to say? Ginger dropped her eyes and stepped away, but as she did so she saw something on her Patrician’s wrist. “What is that?”

Ignatia glanced down. “This? It’s a bit of leather.” She pulled her sleeve back down over it. “Do not change the subject.”

“It’s a bracelet made to look like my collar.”

“Don’t be presumptuous.”

Ginger stared at her, stung. “All this formality, and what’s it for, I wonder.”

This time Ignatia looked away. “Even as a stranger in a strange land, I know where to put boundaries and where to enforce them, too. This meeting was a mistake; suffice it to say that you’re doing well and I will watch your career with interest. You are dismissed.”

 

A year after Ignatia took the tyranny, the circus came to town. It is said that you cannot go home again, and Ignatia felt this truth more keenly than she thought possible. Because when the circus came to town it was, in fact, her circus. And it wasn’t her circus at all. Somewhere along the way the big tent roof had been replaced, the placards repainted, the petting zoo animals more scrupulously groomed than ever before. There were strange faces manning the booths, strange faces juggling clubs and telling tall tales.

For the third time in her life, Ignatia sat in the audience and watched the show. Nothing was left unchanged—even her mother’s routine had been rearranged. She stunned the crowd as always; Ignatia would not hear a negative word about her performance, least of all from herself. But it was different. You cannot step into the same river twice, and you cannot go home. Kerosene, bangin’ grains and cotton candy hung heavy in the air, tricking her mind into feeling at home, a poor facsimile. She thought of Sir Samuel The First, leaving Ankh-Morpork to travel the Disc for years and years, only to come back and take up his own mantle. Another poor facsimile, she reflected, but one she felt keenly. When he returned, did he find himself looking for familiar faces on the street, haunted by memories of comrades either aged or fallen? Did he ever stand on Dolly Sisters Lane, and close his eyes, and let the sound and smell of his city take him crashing back through time? If she closed her eyes, Ignatia could pretend for a moment that everything was simple. Not right by any means, but simple. By now, she would be washing the kerosene off her hands with a damp cloth while she sped by the ticket takers, collect the stubs, weigh them, check on the animal feed, peek in to make sure the clowns were doing alright. She let her eyes drift open, only to see the circus from the wrong side.

 

For some weeks, a small team of carpenters and cunning artificers refurbished a new office just down the hall from the Oblong Office. Last to be put in place was an engraved brass placard reading _Grand Vizier._

Lady Wrathine paused in the hallway to admire it. She felt tired to her bones, as she often did after a soiree. As far as parties went, it wasn’t too bad. For some reason, high society looked forward to the occasional balls she threw. The wealthiest and nobbiest of Ankh-Morpork’s citizenry certainly enjoyed themselves, but Ignatia herself couldn’t seem to get the hang of parties. The canapes and little finger sandwiches were tasteless in her mouth, the lighting subdued despite its abundance, the wine bitter. She did manage to frighten the wits out of a physician who had the audacity to make her listen to nonsensical drivel with her own two ears.

“We’re finding that sentient beings only use about sixty percent of their brains,” he told her earnestly.

Everyone has a breaking point, and unfortunately this young doctor just tipped Ignatia over the brink. “Is that so?” she marveled, eyes round and glassy. “And am I correct in thinking you have a son?”

He blinked. “Well. Yes?”

“Marvelous.” With a flick of her wrist she summoned a dark clerk, who appeared at her elbow from the shadows. “Fetch Dr. Marmoud’s son directly to the surgical theater at the Lady Sybil Free Hospital.” She turned a blinding smile on the paling physician. “We’re going to test his hypothesis by scooping out forty percent of his gray matter and seeing if he misses it.”

“No! Please!”

She affected an air of bewilderment. “Whyever would you protest, good doctor? You seemed so certain when you told me one uses only sixty percent of one’s brain.” She dropped her voice and narrowed her eyes. “Is it possible you might have oversimplified your research for the sake of attention?”

In the present, in the hallway outside her office, Ignatia let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and rolled her shoulders. It had been a relief to bid her skeptical public a fair good night and retreat here. She padded into the welcome dark of her office.

“Vetinari never had a grand vizier.”

Ignatia did not fear assassination. The Assassin’s Guild as a whole was quite pleased with her. Still, she found it unnerving to run into someone in her office after hours. She ignited a lamp by the door and spotted the intruder sitting in her chair, facing away from the door, looking over the city. Her city.

“Vetinari isn’t here,” she said, feeling churlish and prickly and hard all over. The chair’s occupant turned slowly and with the utmost menace to face her. “Shoo.”

Commander Vimes got out of her chair and prowled along the perimeter of the office, restless. “Aren’t you curious how I got in here?”

She settled down behind her desk and lit another lamp. There were files in need of sorting, bills in need of signing, a whole sheaf of mail to systematically annihilate. “Either you got in through the door or you didn’t.”

He scowled. “Aren’t you concerned by the big fuck-you axe I have in my hands?”

She looked up and, indeed, he held a big fuck-you axe. “Well done,” she replied, dry as toast. “Dwarven make, is it? Here to give me that old speech, ‘Be good or I’ll impeach you permanently?’”

“Well, when you put it like that it doesn’t sound nearly as menacing.”

“Either make your peace or make yourself scarce, Vimes.”

“Grand vizier? Since when does a tyrant need a grand vizier?”

Ignatia steepled her fingers and pressed them to her lips, careful to keep a straight face. She could see why Havelock Vetinari-may-he-rest-forever favored Vimes; he got right to the point. “There is a precedent.”

“Yes, in folktales where the royal vizier goes power mad and makes a play for the throne, killing hundreds.” He patted his pockets and then forced his hands still. “And what kind of title is grand vizier, anyway? I’m pretty sure that’s just a title you made up for the look of the thing.”

Ah, and there was the classic Vimes of Vetinari’s time, the Vimes described in that blasted journal Ignatia spent a month deciphering. Vimes, so thorough and righteous and angry, but not exceptionally bright. Over thirty years, and only just now picking at the knot of his past. Any longer, and she would have to give him hints.

“Just making up titles?” she inquired, a delicate eyebrow raised. “Do you think a tyrant, now or previously, ever invented a title for the sake of keeping the peace?”

He shook his head. “Are we talking about the grand vizier thing, or…”

“Indeed. I think you will find that a grand vizier is not such a great change to get used to. In fact, it may be that a somewhat more sympathetic ear is practical for the running of a state. As for inventing titles, it is not uncommon for a tyrant to reinvent a title that had previously fallen out of favor, or even attribute a title to a position heretofore unseen.” She glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall. “I fear I have another appointment waiting, and I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties, Commander.”

She could see the gears turning in his head, despite the stony resolution of his expression. “Ma’am,” he replied and stormed out of the Oblong Office. The door closed. At her desk she listened, and yes, Vimes punched the wall in the hall. Ignatia allowed herself a small, secret smile.

Some minutes later, her office door opened again, admitting her last appointment for the day. She was not a tall woman, but she bore herself regally with a natural grace and poise that would prickle the heart of the most elegant dancer with envy. Her hair was plaited down her back, a half mask of fine white porcelain fitted perfectly to her cheek and hiding half of her face. She still smelled of kerosene smoke, bangin’ grains, damp straw. Home.

“Child mine,” the grand vizier grinned.

Ignatia rose from her chair and greeted her mother, wrapping her arms around her. “Mama.”

“A fine kettle of fish this is. What is a grand vizier supposed to do?”

“Advise me in all things, Mama. You even got an office. I made you business cards.”

“Am I really to go by Florence McGillacuddy?” she demanded, patting her hip pocket where a dozen of the fine business cards rested.

“A wise woman once told me it’s important to have a last name, if only for publishing purposes.”

“Baby girl, you’ll be the absolute death of me.”

“And if anyone gets too uppity with you, you can send them to me and I’ll put them to rights.”

“We’re not in the circus anymore,” the once Astounding Florencia agreed, somber. “It’s a cut-throat world, this business with desks and memos and public civility.”

“It is, Mama. But it comes with a dental plan and three meals a day. And we still get to work side-by-side, the way it should be.”

“That fellow I passed on the way in,” Florence McGillacuddy said, with the kind of mental gear shift that Ignatia slipped into and that still occasionally floored Drumknott. “Striking fellow, wasn’t he?”

“No, Mama.”

“Dashing, I’d say. I’d even go so far as—“

“Noooo—“

“Rakishly handsome.”

“Argh.”

Florence grinned, unrepentant. She patted her daughter’s hand. “This is going to be so much fun."


End file.
